David Sedaris: "Jesus Shaves"

I'm a huge fun of David Sedaris, humor essayist and all around funny guy. His writing is elegant while at the same time deceptively on-target..I often will laugh at one paragraph while weeping at the next. Below is an excerpt from one of his books, "Me Talk Pretty One Day" on the joy of Easter...

It was my second month of French class, and the teacher was leading us in an exercise deisgned to promote the use of one our latest personal pronoun..

Printed in our textbooks was a list of major holidays accompanied by a scattered arrangement of photographs depicting French people in the act of celebration. The object of the lesson was to match the holiday with the corresponding picture...We'd finished discussing Bastille Day, and the techer had moved on to Easter, which was represented in our textbooks by a black and white photograph of a chocolate bell lying upon a bed of palm fronds.

"And what does one do on Easter? Would anyone like to tell us?"

One students was attempting to answer the teacher's latest question when another student interrupted, shouting, "Excuse me, but what's an Easter?"

The teacher called upon the rest of us to explain.

"It is, said one student, "a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and...She faltered and her fellow student came to her aid.

"He call his self Jesus and then he die one day on two...morsels of...lumber."

The rest of the class jumped in, offering bits of information that would have given the pope an aneurysm.

"He did one day and then he go above of my head to live with your father."

"He weared of himself the long hair and after he die, the first he come back here for to say hello to the peoples."

"He nice, the Jesus."

"He make the good things, and on the Easter we be sad because somebody makes him dead today."

Part of the problem had to do with our limited vocabulary. Simple nouns such as "cross" and "resurrection" were beyond our grasp let alone such complicated reflexive phrases as "to give of yourself your only begotten son." Faced with the challenge of explaining the cornerstone of Christianity, we did what any self-respecting group of people might do. We talked about food instead.

"Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb" one of the students explained. "One too may eat of the chocolate."

"And who brings the chocolate?" the teacher asked.

I knew the word, so I raised my hand, saying, "The rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate."

"A rabbit?" The teacher, assuming I'd used the wrong word, positioned her index fingers on top of her head, wriggling them as though they were ears. "You mean one of these? A "rabbit" rabbit?"

"Well, sure," I said. "He come in the night when one sleep on a bed. With a hand he have a basket and foods."...

In communicating any religious belief, the operative word is "faith", a concept illustrated by our very presence in that classroom. Why bother struggling with the grammar lessons of a six-year-old if each of us didn't believe that, against all reason, we might eventually improve? If I could hope to one day carry on a fluent conversation, it was a relatively short leap to believing that a rabbit might visit my home in the middle of the night, leaving behind a handful of chocolate kisses and a carton of menthol cigarettes...

David Sedaris has written several books, including the one that this is taken from "Me Talk Pretty One Day". He is often heard on NPR.