David Sedaris, "Jesus Shaves": explaining Easter in beginning French class.
"We'd finished discussing Bastille Day, and the teacher 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?' The Italian nanny was attempting to answer when the Moroccan student interrupted, shouting, 'Excuse me, but what's an Easter?' ... The Poles led the charge to the best of their ability. 'It is,' said one, 'a party for the little boy of God who call his self Jesus and ... oh, shit.' She faltered and her fellow countryman 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 die 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 day he come back here for to say hello to the peoples.' 'He nice, the Jesus.'
"We talked about food instead. 'Easter is a party for to eat of the lamb,' the Italian nanny 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 brings the chocolate.' 'A 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.' The teacher sighed and shook her head. As far as she was concerned, I had just explained everything that was wrong with my country. 'No, no,' she said. 'Here in France the chocolate is brought by a big bell that flies in from Rome.' I called for a time-out. 'But how do the bell know where you live?' 'Well,' she said, 'how does a rabbit?' It was a decent point, but at least a rabbit has eyes.
"I wondered then if, without the language barrier, my classmates and I could have done a better job making sense of Christianity, an idea that seems pretty far-fetched to begin with. In communicating any religious belief, the operative word is faith, a concept illustrated by our very presence in that classroom.... 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. ... A bell though -- that's fucked up."
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Sedaris is hilarious! 
