There’s Madonna, and there’s the Madonna.

On a European vacation, parents feel the compulsion to take their children into the hushed and extinguished-candle-smelling confines of major churches. Every child on a European vacation is desperate to avoid all churches. They look the same, having all been built for the same Client. Eight-year-old Devon and I stood in a darkened church alcove, at the foot of a bigger-than-life statue, under its beatific gaze.

“Dad, who’s that lady?” asked Devon.

“That’s the Virgin Mary.”

“Who’s that?” The sound you hear is Sister Theophane, approximately 115-years-old when she was my Grade Four catechism teacher, spinning in her grave.

“She’s Jesus’s mother,” I said.

“Ohhhh…that’s why you say, ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph’ when you swear.” I saw a retired American couple, each wearing their fanny packs in the front because that’s just SO cool, look sharply in our direction. Oh, great.

“Is Joseph the dad?” asked Devon.

“Well, yes.” I paused a moment. “Uhhh, no, not really. Joseph’s not the real father because Mary’s a virgin.”

“What’s a virgin?” The backward-fanny-packers pretended to be engrossed in a nearby plaque dedicated to Saint-Somebody-of-the-Something, but each surreptitiously turned up their hearing aids.

“She gave birth to Jesus without having sex. Joseph was just the husband. Maybe they weren’t even married at the time…I’m not sure. But she didn’t have sex with Joseph until much later. Which somehow hasn’t impacted her title of ‘virgin’ for 2000 years.”

“Aw dad, do I have to know all that? Why do you always give me these long answers with too much information?”

I ignored Devon’s complaint. “Anyway, God is Jesus’s father.”

“Grandma said Jesus was God.”

“Well, he is,” I said. “But God is also the father of Jesus. It’s all a little confusing.”

“Is this why we don’t go to church on Sundays, dad?” I heard disgusted tsk-tsking from the sartorially-challenged eavesdroppers nearby.

“Something like that,” I mumbled.