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 and eyes fixed on the middle distance.

In this segment, which originally aired in 2020, Eloise Blondio,

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 pastor and Baiu Chui

remember seeing

belonged to his grandmother. It hung in her bedroom.

And of course it was an image of a blonde hair blue-eyed guy.

That picture bothered me, but I never would say anything.

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

The eyes moved like it was following you around the room and at night in the dark it

glowed.

In the 60s and 70s, we had a lot of stuff

that glowed in the dark.

So.

And when you say the eyes were moving,

the eyes weren't actually moving.

They just kind of felt like they were, right? No, they 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 beechy waves,

...