Let There Be Fairy Tales
By Michelle Ami Reyes
Why should the Christian read fairy tales?
To properly answer that question, I must begin, like the English author and academic, J.R.R. Tolkien, in explaining what a fairy tale is and what it is not. Fairy tales span the breadth of human history, first orally transmitted, then inked onto pages, and now presented digitally on screens. One of the oldest fairy tale collections is the Pentamerone (1634), subtitled The Tale of Tales, by Italian poet, Giambattista Basile. Lesser known today, the Pentamerone was influential for two other patriarchs within the fairy tale pantheon: the French author, Charles Perrault, and the German brothers, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm. Perrault’s Tales of Mother Goose (1695) is responsible for the dissemination of fairy tales as a popular genre, and included familiar titles such as “Sleeping Beauty,” “Puss in Boots,” “Little Red Riding Hood,” “Bluebeard,” and “The Fairies.” The Brother Grimm’s Children’s and Household Tales (1812) continued to refine these stories, giving them greater literary coherence and, at times, adding clear moral lessons.
The fairy tales of Basile, Perrault, and Grimm can be understood in the broadest sense of the term; they are stories that deal with worlds filled with magic. As Tolkien himself argues in On Fairy Stories (1947), of “Faërie: the Perilous Realm itself, and the air that blows in that country.” In fact, magic is one of the defining characteristics of the fairy tale. The magical dimension is presented in a recognizable world, a world that looks and feels much like our own with kings and peasants, unkind mothers and absent fathers, love, desire, and war. But unlike our world, humans interact with angels and demons, dwarves and witches, shamans and wizards, and things that turn into gold or fly or expand or shrink as if they were common aspects of their lives. The supernatural is not a surprise; it violates ontological boundaries without panic or confusion. A talking frog does not surprise a princess, a poor man does not question the flower that blooms into gems, and the child puts on a cloak of feathers without question.
The presence of magic, however, does not mean fairy tales are happy, in the worldly sense of the term. The fairy tales of old are not cut from the same cloth of Disney movies with their happily ever afters. These are stories birthed in the harsh realities of life – of suffering families, starving children, lonely wives and husbands, oppressed peasants, abused women, unloved sons and daughters, and youth racked with disease. These are the stories of vulnerable people, in desperate need of help, and it is their pursuit of, or willingness to receive magic, that they are empowered to survive. In Vasilisa the Beautiful, the titular girl’s life is saved because she obeys the commands of a talking doll. In The Queen Bee, a simple boy accomplishes an insurmountable task with the aid of five thousand ants. The heroines and heroes of fairy tales are heroic precisely because they are fully aware of their lacks, and they receive magical aid as a declaration of their need for help.
I now return to the question of why Christians should read fairy tales. Like the fairy tale protagonist who seek out and perceive magic, we were made to be Divine Intuitors, seeking out and perceiving the presence of God around us. In the Book of Romans in the Bible, we are told that “For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse” (1:20). The magic of God is all around us, in us, in the air we breathe, the food we eat, and the people we interact with. God’s spiritual powers have existed since the beginning of creation, and they exist still, invisible and yet felt in all things. Scripture tells us that the movement of the Holy Spirit is like the wind, coursing through the earth. We cannot see the wind, but we can see its effects (Jn 3:8). More than that, the supernatural work of God in this world calls to us. It is like a musical vibration, pulsing through our minds, our bodies, our senses, seeking to open our eyes to what we cannot physically see.
The Christian as Divine Intuitor understands that God reveals himself in creative ways. But we will not be able to detect such creativity unless we regularly engage in exercises of spiritual imagination. Among other things, we must read Scripture and fiction, i.e., stories filled with Faërie, side by side, so that we can open their minds to worlds of ideas and possibilities for how God works in our present age. Folk and fairy tales, after all, are in Scripture as well. Consider, the magic of food. The woman in 2 Kings 4 pours her small ounce of oil continuously until all her jars are magically filled. Likewise, in Matthew 14:13-21, Jesus turns five loaves of bread and two fish into a feast for five thousand people. There are talking animals, such as Balaam’s donkey in Numbers 22, and animal helpers, such as the ravens that bring food for Elijah in the desert in 1 Kings 17. In the world of the Bible, water transforms into blood and wine, fire reigns down from above, trees shrivel up and die, the dead reawaken and walk through cities, humans are regurgitated by whales and walk across the surface of seas. Fairy tales echo God’s revelations through nature and animals, food and ordinary objects that defy physics. They help us see the hand of God in all things.
The Christian should not fear magic, nor stories of magic. Rather, we should read stories ingrained with the fantastic and the marvelous, because in it we gain a mirror of the divine in our own world. As American author, Terri Windling , writes, “Fairy tales were not my escape from reality as a child; rather, they were my reality -- for mine was a world in which good and evil were not abstract concepts, and like fairy-tale heroines, no magic would save me unless I had the wit and heart and courage to use it widely.” In “Puss in Boots,” for example, we can imagine the ways that God is like the figure of the cat, who does not abandon the poor and downtrodden, but in fact rescues them from great evil. In “The White Snake,” we can catch a glimpse of God’s revelation through compassionate creatures that help those who walk the path of righteousness. Reading the Mexican folktale, “The Bear Prince” (“El Principe Oso”), or the Japanese tale, “The Swan Maiden,” or the Hungarian tale, “The Little Rooster’s Diamond Halfpenny,” helps us recognize our need for God in the big and small moments of our lives. The fairy tale world is our world. The Gospel itself is a fairy tale par excellence, a story in which helpless human beings are caught in a spiritual trapping of their own doing and only freed by a supernatural God once they’ve admitted their need for him.
So, let there be fairy tales! Let the Christian tune their heart to the spiritual magic of this world, so that they no longer become surprised by God’s workings around them. Whether in a dream or an answered prayer, whether in the music of nature or an interaction with a pet, whether in the stories we weave, or in the recognizable voice of a stranger, may we intuit God manifest in the world around us and see his presence as ordinary, because he was what we were expecting all along.
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Michelle Ami Reyes
Michelle Ami Reyes, PhD, is an author and activist. Her first book, Becoming All Things, is the recipient of the 2022 ECPA award. Her second book, The Race-Wise Family, is a finalist in the Family & Marriage category for the 2022 Christianity Today book awards. Michelle writes at the intersection of multiculturalism, faith, and justice. She has contributed to several book chapters including The Jesus I Wish I Knew in High School, Kingdom & Country, and Take Heart: 100 Devotions to Seeing God When Life's Not Okay. Her writings on faith and culture have appeared in Christianity Today and Patheos and she’s appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and NBC News.com. Michelle lives in Austin, Texas with her pastor husband, and two amazing kids.
Visit MichelleAmiReyes.com and @michelleamireyes on Instagram for more information.