During this holiday season, you likely encountered public nativity scenes depicting the birth of Christ,

presenting the family with very rare exceptions as white, and the same can be said of his ubiquitous adult portrait with fair skin and hair or radiant gold in eyes fixed on the middle distance.

In this segment, which originally aired in 2020, Eloise Blondeo, our resident graduate of Harvard Divinity School, traces how the historically dubious image became American canon and its consequences.

The first picture of Jesus that Detroit passed it in Bayou Chou, you remember seeing, belonged to his grandmother, a hung in her bedroom.

Of course, it was the image of a blonde hair blue eye guy. That picture bothered me, but I never would say anything.

You know, dare not tell my grandmother, would you please take that picture off the wall.

The eyes moved like it was following you around the road and at night in the dark it glowed.

In the 60s and 70s, we had a lot of stuff to glow in the dark.

And when you say the eyes were moving, the eyes weren't actually moving, it just kind of felt like they were, right?

No, they weren't actually moving, but you know, as a child, you have an imagination.

He saw that image of Jesus pale skin, long beachy waves, everywhere growing up in Detroit.

I couldn't explain why, but I just didn't feel comfortable with that picture.

Of course, you see the same images when Jesus portrayed anywhere in popular culture.

He was 12 years old in 1967 when his city turned into a water.

The water's hitter's brunt.

Sniper's world, the city, gunfire flickered from neighborhood to neighborhood.

Cold blocks smoldered, the smell was everywhere.

For five days, the so-called Detroit riots were credited with sparking the black power movement.

Over 40 people died.

In the aftermath, chewy drove down Linwood Street with his parents, like he did every weekend.

As usual, they passed the statue of Jesus that loomed over the intersection.

Seven-foot tall, arms outstretched, long hair, white stone.

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