The Enormous Turnip is not one of the better-known fairytales; I only first encountered it when I was teaching French, as it had been translated into French as a resource for teaching younger children the vocabulary for vegetables and animals! This simply story is of a grandfather who plants a turnip (un navet, in French, for those who are interested!) which grows so large that he cannot pull it up himself. He recruits a variety of people (and animals) for help, including his wife, his grandchildren, the dog and the cat… but it is only when the mouse helps that they are successful in pulling up the turnip!

The moral of this story is simple: collaboration and cooperation are necessary. We need teamwork! Also, the seemingly small and insignificant mouse becomes a vital part in the story, despite looking so tiny as to be useless or irrelevant. This reminds me of Paul’s teaching that each one of us is a part of the body of Christ and every member is essential. (1 Cor 12:12-26) We’re all different and all needed. When we work together with God, nothing is impossible.

Fairytales act as fuel for the imagination. In them, we have a fantasy world of fairy godmothers and wicked witches; we have carriages conjured up from pumpkins; we have a world where nothing is impossible. That in itself is a vivid reminder to us that there is more to this world than meets the eye…

‘Puss in Boots’ is an example of this imaginary world: we have a cat who wears a pair of boots, talks and takes the leading role in a story where the marriage of a poor miller’s son to a princess is incidental to the ingenious scheming of the main character, Puss. Anthropomorphism – where human emotions and skills are attributed to an animal or object – is quite easily embraced by children and is a frequent feature of fairytales.

The moral of ‘Puss in Boots’ shows us that perseverance and skill, not to mention a little bit of suave savoir-faire (perfectly exemplified in the voice of Antonio Banderas as Puss in the Shrek fairytale and spin-off stories) may well triumph over poverty and external circumstances. The story concerns a poor man who has little going for him; his eldest brother has inherited their father’s mill and his middle brother the mules, whereas all he has inherited is a cat. Ultimately, however, he prospers thanks to the skills of the cat, and the story ends once again with the marriage of this miller to a beautiful princess.

We may well feel this fairytale commends dubious means, but Jesus spoke about a shrewd manager in one of his parables (Luke 16:1-8), and Puss always reminds me of this person! We are urged to be ‘as shrewd as snakes and as innocent as doves’ (Matt 10:16). Moreover, Puss’s loyalty to his master is an example to us. God wants the same kind of loyalty from us, a single-minded devotion to Him which supersedes all other loyalties. (Matt 10:37)

Fairytales are often criticised for focussing on love stories and for painting an unrealistic picture of romantic love (always between a beautiful woman in need of rescue by a handsome prince.) We’ve seen that that story in itself is a parable, for the church is a beautiful bride-in-waiting that needed to be rescued from sin by the magnificent Prince of Peace. I think it’s unfair to label all fairytales in this way, however, for some definitely have other themes.

Jack and the Beanstalk is one such tale. This is the story of Jack and his widowed mother, a tale of poverty and tension, for one of the protagonists is the giant who does not wish Jack to steal his gold, and as a result, we fear for Jack’s life. It is less clearcut in its moral teaching, for Jack is portrayed as both easily-led and foolish (for selling the dairy cow for ‘magic beans’ rather than for a secure profit) and the moral of the story seems to condone theft (the golden egg which free Jack and his mother from poverty was stolen, after all.)

Despite this moral ambiguity, the story focusses on important themes (material wealth is a key focus of life on earth for the majority of people) and shows us something of the temptations we face in life. Jesus reminded us that we cannot serve two masters (Matt 6:24) and advised us to store up treasure in heaven, not on earth. (Matt 6:19-21) The Bible warns us clearly of the dangers of covetousness and wealth, whilst commanding us to be generous and care for the poor. Sometimes a fairytale acts as a warning to us, a lived-out parable of what can happen if we follow wrong paths. Jack’s foray into the giant’s kingdom may seem to turn out fortuitously for him, but even here, the felling of the beanstalk to prevent the giant from entering Jack’s world is a reminder that we have to deal drastically and radically with the sin that so easily entangles us if we are to run with perseverance the race marked out for us. (Heb 12:1-3)

Virtually the first film I can remember watching was Disney’s ‘Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.’ I can remember being terrified by the wicked stepmother in that film and feeling her raw jealousy as the mirror responded to her question ‘Mirror, mirror, on the wall/ Who is the fairest of them all?’ with the assertion that Snow White was more beautiful than she was. I can also remember willing Snow White not to take the apple from the queen and being horrified that this woman could transform herself into that old hag and deceive the lovely heroine. I was totally immersed in the story, and whilst the seven dwarfs provided much comic relief, my abiding memory of that story as a five-year-old is fear. The innocence, beauty and sheer loveliness of Snow White was so contrasted with the evil of the wicked queen that even then, the conventional ending of the prince awakening her from her poisoned sleep with a kiss never seemed to me the main point of the story.

Fairytales give us a glimpse into good and evil. They do so in conventional forms, but for me as a child, the transformation of the wicked queen from a beautiful woman to a wicked-looking hag was my first understanding that evil did not always have to look ugly to be ugly. I knew she was wicked when she looked beautiful; I knew she was wicked when she was ugly. Disney personified evil in this character and as a child, I recognised that evil comes in different disguises. Paul tells us that Satan masquerades as an angel of light. (2 Cor 11:14) I think I learned that first from ‘Snow White’...

Whilst fairytales may place what people have subsequently felt is an over-emphasis on female beauty, I have always felt that they underline the need for inner beauty as much as outward forms of beauty. Snow White’s kindness and good nature are seen repeatedly in the film; she is generous, warm-hearted and loving. I rooted for her not because she was beautiful but because of these inner characteristics, and as such, I learned a valuable lesson about beauty from a young age.

‘Sleeping Beauty‘ is another classic fairytale involving a beautiful princess, a sleeping enchantment and a handsome prince. In this story, the celebrations at the birth of a princess are ruined when an evil fairy curses her, saying that when she pricks her finger on a spindle on her sixteenth birthday, she will die. A good fairy is able to commute this sentence to sleep, from which she can only be awakened by the kiss of a prince. Despite all attempts to rid the kingdom of any spindle on which the princess could prick her finger, she does indeed do this and falls into a sleep from which she is finally awakened by the kiss of a prince, whom she subsequently marries and they ‘live happily ever after.’

Fairytales are not for the faint-hearted; they contain their fair share of darkness, evil and dramatic tension. In this, they are useful teaching aids for children, for we live in a world where there are wars, where sin can be found everywhere. Fairytales contain the battle between good and evil which is actually the backdrop to our daily lives. They are also reassuring in giving us ‘happy endings‘. It is perhaps this tendency above all which makes people cynical about them, for they argue that life is not quite so neatly packaged as a fairytale makes out.

The story of God is adamant, however, that there is a happy ending, an outcome where ‘there will be no more death or mourning or crying or pain, for the old order of things has passed away.’ (Rom 21:4) We may have to wait for our happy ending; we may have to wait beyond this lifetime, but the Bible is adamant that that happy ending will come and will include a beautiful bride (the church) and a marriage feast. (Rev 21:2)  Not so different to a fairytale after all…

Fairytales are modern parables, clothing important truths in stories that enchant us.

‘Beauty and the Beast’ is another of these stories, where the kindness and love of a beautiful girl (Belle) see beyond the ugliness and fierceness of the Beast to transform him and set him free from the spell cast upon him. It’s a tale of the transforming power of love.

In real life, the roles are reversed a little. We are the beast- people tainted by sin, unable to see beyond the physical world, trapped in a mixture of good and evil. Jesus is the Beautiful One who sees beyond that sinfulness and loves us unconditionally. Even while we were still sinners, Jesus died for us. (Rom 5:8)

Just as Belle’s love for the Beast has power to overcome the enchantment which has turned him into an ugly creature, so Jesus’s sacrifice on the cross for us has the power to transform us and free us from the curse of sin, liberating us to become who we really are – people made in the image of God and created for a relationship with our Creator.

This story urges us to see beyond the physical and to believe in the transforming power of love. Far from condemning such love to the realm of fairy stories suitable for children only, we need to embrace these truths and be transformed. We need to see ourselves in these stories and find God in them too.