German Folktales

This is the topic on which I am going to write my blog... when I feel better and can actually sit here to write it.


=(


All right, (Why isn't "alright" grammatically correct? I hate the way "all right" looks, but I hate improper grammar even more than I hate "all right," so I suppose I must deal with it. *sigh*) this is my perspective on the effects of German folktales on young children. When I went to Germany in December of last year, my dad and I spent a lot of time on sidewalks, in restaurants, in markets, etc. I got to observe the differences between American public behavior and German public behavior. Now in America, imagine you're walking through a mall and you see a mother and a small child pass by an ice cream store. The kid wants ice cream. The mother says no. What do you think happens? Of course, the kid throws a fit. How do many parents of young children in America threaten their children into good behavior, especially in December during holiday season? Of course, they tell the child that Santa will be bringing them coal instead of presents. Now during one of my walks through a little "Christmas market" in Berlin, I observed something very interesting. I saw a mother and a little girl walk past a stand that was selling chocolate fudge. The little girl asked her mother for some fudge, and her mother said no. Now this is the part that amazed me: the child simply walked away and didn't say a word about it. No temper tantrum, no crying, no violence, no nothing. This continued all week. I passed by many little kids, and not ONE of them was misbehaving. After recently studying German folktales, I've come to a conclusion as to why this is.


One of the legends in the German culture is of a character named Schwarze Peter ("Black Peter"). In America, we have Santa Claus, who comes for both the good children and the bad children, except he brings coal to the bad ones as punishment instead of presents. Well in Germany, kids are not just threatened into being good with the idea that they'll get coal for Christmas. Instead, Schwarze Peter will come to their house, put a sack over their head (yes, he carries one just like Santa), suffocate them, and cut their hands off. Now this is only one version of the story... I'm sure other people have heard ones that aren't nearly as graphic as that one, but when I have kids, that's the one they're going to hear.

American kids get away with a lot of bad behaviors because the only real threat they face is not getting presents for Christmas (which, of course their parents never stick to anyway). It's the same punishment for any transgression, such as not eating one's dinner, thumb sucking, playing with matches when told not to, not playing mean pranks on adults, etc. In Germany, these things come with far worse consequences, and children are taught these consequences at a very young age... as soon as they are able to understand fairy tales. I am a senior in high school (one who doesn't mind the sight of blood or guts or brains falling out of the skull or decapitations or anything of that nature), and some of the German fairy tales I've read are gruesome enough to make me a little uneasy. There's one that I read about a little boy who refused to eat his soup. He started to become skinny, and after about five days he weighed less than two ounces (yes, specifically in the story, less than two ounces), and the story in this picture book ends with the boy dying of starvation accompanied by a picture of a gravestone with a soup bowl on top of it. And the little girl who played with matches while her parents weren't home? She caught on fire and ended up as a pile of ashes with shoes (pictures of the entire burning process are included in the story). The kid who wouldn't stop sucking his thumbs? A tailor came to his house and cut them off and made blood get all over the floor. The two boys who put a bag full of junebugs in their Uncle Fritz's bed and cut holes in the bags of grain at the flour mill? They got poured into the grinder at the mill, got ground up into little pieces, and the pieces got eaten by ducks.


When I have children, they will be the most perfectly well behaved children in the world. I'm going to teach them every one of these fairy tales.


I have a theory about "Hansel and Gretel" and its effect on world events, but that's a story for another day.