The Pistachio Croissant and the Meaning of Life

Frederick II as Victor Over the Mongols by Carl Rahl

Pistachio Croissant—how simple are those two words! And how simple a thing they seem to convey to the honest work-a-day American! We think of them, it—that is to say, a simple pistachio croissant—and nothing at all could be simpler. Pistachios are simple and croissants are simple. Where is there any room for anything but utter simplicity? And if our mind should drift from that seeming simplicity—what does it alight upon? Perhaps the chocolate croissant (popularly known in France as pain au chocolat), the almond croissant (croissant aux amandes), or perhaps, even, the raisin croissant (pain aux raisins). Yes, it would perhaps alight upon these things and delightful as they are, they too are simple enough. Our minds drift hither and thither on the peaceable waves of croissant-association and as they drift, they find neither Scylla nor Charybdis to distract them, but only familiar shores of flaky dough rendered golden in the half-light of our buttered reverie. And yet!

Few things are as simple as they seem and fewer still as enigmatic as the pistachio croissant. In America, it would be hard to discover that this is the case. As we have already established, pistachio croissants do not alarm us whatsoever. But in France—there the enigma comes to light! Try it out! Go there, locate the nearest patisserie, walk in, and inform the proprietor that you are, in fact, an American (that you have come from the land of amber waves of grain, purple mountain majesties, and so on), and then proceed to inform him that you would very much like to place an order for a pistachio croissant.

At first, the proprietor will simply sneer in disgust. But since that is the customary response in France to all inquiries made by Americans in good faith in good American English, you will no doubt press on. You will perhaps say in your best French, ‘un croissant à la pistachiooo.’ And then—watch how he recoils! How his eyes open wide! How his brow furrows like a barley field on the Western Front in 1914! Chances are he will ejaculate one of those phrases for which his people are infamous: ‘Sacre bleu!’ he will say. Or perhaps, if he is less of a stereotype than he ought to be, ‘Sérieux?’ or ‘Les bras m'en tombent.’ In any case, because you are an American and therefore far too brave to be scared away by such gibberings, he will eventually try to make himself plain to you. In mangled English, he will probably try to explain many things. Perhaps he will begin by saying that you, being an American, are confused: that, for instance, what you call a chocolate croissant is not in France considered a croissant at all. But returning to the pastry of your concern, he will definitively state that he has no such pastry and that there is, in fact, no such pastry in all of France: that such a pastry, were it to be made, would be patently obscene and that the only country on earth capable of construing it would be America. (He means this as an insult.)

Why? Why should this be the case? Why should something as simple as a pistachio croissant cause our pâtisserie proprietor to descend into a fit of Gallic apoplexy? What a question! It is one of those questions that—when we really consider it—we, or at least some of us, would rather not know the answer: Are ghosts real? Does space go on forever? Does it stop? What’s on the other side of a black hole? Why are we so scared of the dark? And if it is just the dark, why do we hide under our covers where it’s only darker? What’s on the other side? When the wings of a butterfly seem to shimmer, why do we seem to forget ourselves? What’s hiding in the light?

According to one popular account, the history of the croissant begins in 13^th century Austria. Frederick II, the Duke of Austria, also known as “Frederick the Quarrelsome,” was the fifth duke of the House of Babenberg. On June 15, 1246, he died in the Battle of the Leitha River, which, according to knight, poet, and adventurer Ulrich von Liechtenstein (author of the purportedly autobiographical poetry collection Frauendienst [Service of Ladies]) took place somewhere or other between Ebenfurth and Neufeld. He had no male heirs and with no one to succeed him, the storied House of Babenberg fell in a drama now known as the War of the Babenberg Succession. At first, the Bohemian Přemyslids vied to fill the vacuum and in due course they triumphed over the Hungarian House of Árpád. But that triumph soon enough gave way to another when all these strangely named, long-forgotten houses were defeated by a house that, strangely named as it is, has not yet been forgotten: the House of Habsburg. Thus, on December 27, 1282, King Rudolf I gave the escheated duchy of Austria to his son, Albert, and once more there was peace. (Until the latter was assassinated by his nephew in 1308.)¹

It was during this time of dramatic twists and turns that the popularly-purported ancestor of the croissant, the Austrian kipferl (which derives its curious name from the Old High German word, kipfa, for a horn-shaped carriage stanchion) made its first appearance in the country, though at the time these pastries were also known as chipfen and are attested by no less a poet than Jans der Enikel, author of the Weltchronik, an epic of 30,000 lines or so covering the creation of the world, Satan’s rebellion, major episodes of the Old Testament, the life and times of Alexander the Great, and everything else it seems he could think of until the reign of Frederick II (the Holy Roman Emperor, that is—not the Duke). He wrote of many things and much of what he wrote was perhaps more colorful than true in a capitalized sober sense (for instance, that the Emperor Nero once gave birth to a Toad or that Noah discovered alcohol after observing one of his goats accidentally becoming intoxicated). But when Enikel (very briefly) mentioned chipfen, historians have no reason to suppose that this was such a fabrication. It was a simple baked good: a yeast-bread rolled into the form of a crescent prior to baking.

That seems simple enough. But, befitting an ancestor of the pistachio croissant, the kipferl or chipfen is not as simple as it seems. There is, in fact, a competing popular account that places the birth of the kipferl a bit later in history, asserting it was really invented following the Habsburg-led defeat of the Ottoman Empire in 1683 at the Battle of Vienna: a splendid war. (It boasts the largest cavalry charge in recorded history.) The forces of the Ottoman Empire and its vassal state commanded by the Grand Vizier Merzifonlu Kara Mustafa Pasha laid siege to Vienna on July 14. The latter demanded that the city surrender. But Feldzeugmeister Ernst Rüdiger Graf von Starhemberg, having heard a few days prior that the town of Perchtoldsdorf had surrendered and were slaughtered anyways, flatly refused the Grand Vizier. It was a grim situation. The outer palisade of the city was over a century old and largely rotten. The Ottomans were pillaging the countryside, killing what men they found, enslaving women and children, and cutting off food to the city. People were tired. Fatigue became such a prevalent problem that von Starhemberg ordered any soldier found asleep at his watch to be shot. Eventually, a polish relief army arrived. A nobleman-turned-spy coordinated the details. And then the battle ensued. The Winged Hussars of immortal fame rushed against the Ottoman troops and three hours later Vienna was free. The leader of the relief forces, the Polish King John III Sobieski (whom his defeated enemies later styled, the “Lion of Lechistan”), said of the battle, not, “Veni, vidi, vici,” but rather, “Venimus, vidimus, Deus vicit” (We came, we saw, God conquered).² And it was during this siege that the kipferl was purportedly created by a baker who had, while working in the night, heard rumblings underground, which, after he alerted the authorities—who then investigated—were found to have come from Ottoman troops trying to tunnel under the city. In reward, after the war, this baker asked for nothing more than the exclusive right to bake a pastry in the shape of the crescent of the Ottoman flag to be eaten by the good people of the city who had been forced to endure so much hunger as a sort of token of their spectacular triumph.

The latter is probably the most prevalent version of the croissant myth, having been diffused in 1948 by Alfred Gottschalk³ (though, according to the Oxford Companion to Food, he gave a different account just a decade earlier in Larousse Gastronomique, which he coauthored with renowned French chef Prosper Montagné, alleging the kipferl’s origin in a similar story involving the 1686 Siege of Buda).⁴ Complicating the matter further, there are older, even more spurious legends, asserting that the kipferl, or some other ancestor of the croissant, was actually invented following the defeat of the Umayyads by the Franks at the Battle of Tours in 732. In any case, however, all of these stories seem to share a common idea: that the ancestor of the croissant was invented as a celebration of a Christian triumph over Muslim forces. (Indeed, in 2013 during the Syrian Civil War, a Sharia committee in Aleppo issued a fatwa against croissants on this basis.)

At any rate, whether the kipferl dates back to the 8^th, 13^th, or 17^th century, it was not until the 19^th century that the croissant, as we know it, took the stage: at some point in the 1830s an Austrian artillery officer by the name of August Zang opened a bakery in Paris, started selling the then-foreign kipferl to Parisians, and in short order it was adopted into the local cuisine and improved by the use of yeast-leavened laminated dough to produce its now famous texture.

Then something happened: bakers had a problem. They made lots of croissants, but sometimes not all of their croissants were sold before going stale. This left them with a lot of stale croissants. So, what did these geniuses do? Well, they sliced them open horizontally, filled them with frangipane (a sort of almond-flavored custard), and then topped them with a dash of the latter plus sliced almonds before baking them once again, thereby rendering an inferior product into a specialty one marketable at a premium. It was an innovation born of decadence and avarice and it did not stop at almonds. No! It swept up chocolate, raisins, and various other savories. But this innovation had a limit: pistachios—or at least it used to. In the New World, in the United States of America, in the 21^st century, this process went further and at long last embraced the pistachio to the great consternation of France.⁵ But why?

What makes pistachio croissants so special? It cannot merely be the pistachio: French chefs are no stranger to the nut; in France there is no uproar or consternation over the pistachio macaron, eclair, financier, dacquoise, mille-feuille, religieuse, and so on. Rather, it must be something about the combination of these two things—pistachio and croissant—that makes the Gallic mind reel: that sees in their combination some synthesis or supervening property that is distinctly obscene. But what could it be?

As I pondered this most profound of questions, this mysterium tremendum et deliciosum, I resolved to do some fieldwork and went to a café that I knew to sell the pastry, my supposition being that there is knowledge to be got in the taste of a thing, in the immediate, sumptuous encounter of it—that is, in its qualia—that cannot be got merely from such learnèd books as I had already consumed. And fortunately, at the café I had chosen there was a pistachio croissant in the display case and when I ordered it, I marveled at the proprietor’s lack of astonishment with my choice. Thus, with the pastry on a little plate, I took a seat on the patio to consider the object of my inquiry in the light of the afternoon sun.

I tasted it and it was delicious. But I could not taste the mystery for which I had been looking. What I could taste—the sweetness, the butter, what was simply delicious in it—oh, it seemed to mock me! How very tragic that bite! If a moderner, if you or I, were to taste the Forbidden Fruit that damned man to labor and die, perhaps we would also taste nothing in particular: perhaps these sorts of things are just like that (I thought). And so, I looked upon the pastry mournfully and what was mournful in my look was more than matched by my inward mourning for the death of a thing I was not really certain ever was. (Thus do some soulful types mourn, for instance, Atlantis.) Indeed, amongst mournful-looks, it is apparently a very peculiar one and as it happened someone sitting at the table beside mine recognized it as such, saying, “Aha! That pistachio croissant, those eyes—those sensitive eyes swimming in grief—that gaze that goes into the abyss, but doesn’t get so much as a glance in return! You are pondering the mystery of that pastry there?”

Startled, I turned and looked at the person who had just addressed me. He had a unique face (to put it one way). It was the sort that could serve as a caricature of any number of gloomy Teutonic philosophers of the late 19^th century. And his attire, which was somber and shabby in an untenured-academic sort of way decisively matched (with the exception of an odd accessory: a rather large signet ring featuring the figure of Proteus rampant on a weathervane). Seeing that he had my attention, this person continued, saying, “Forgive me. I didn’t introduce myself, which may or may not be improper in these parts. My name is Franz Bibfeldt.”⁶ I introduced myself in turn, assuring him that I was indeed pondering the mystery of the pistachio croissant.

What followed was a strange and wonderful conversation. At first, Bibfeldt, whom I soon learned in introductory conversation was a sort of philosopher who had come to Washington, D.C. to, in his own words, “advise the New Administration,” assured me that he did not disturb me for the sake of mere amusement. “The pistachio croissant,” he said, “is not what it seems. It is everything and it is nothing at all. But what it is not is most certainly a simple pastry—unless of course one experiences it as most do. But you are not most. I see you have taken the first step beyond the perimeter of the crowd. You have crossed the blue hills at the horizon and entered the twilight vale between knowing and unknowing—between yes and no—the path of Veillicht to the palace of Jein!”

He then asked me how I had come to appreciate the mystery of the pistachio croissant in the first place and I duly explained to him what I have already explained above: the strange attitude the French seem to have for pistachio croissants, what would happen if an American tried to order a pistachio croissant at a French patisserie, the probable and dubious accounts of the history of the pastry I was familiar with, and my notion that the problem at hand could neither be simply accounted for by the pistachio or the croissant, but rather something in or about the combination of the two. And all this he listened to with a knowing air as if he had not only heard it all before, but had once thought through the very same problem himself. Indeed, he seemed amused and at many points in my explication of the matter, he seemed to chuckle to himself as if I were telling the first halves to a set of jokes he remembered fondly. Eventually, he said, “Well, let us begin at the beginning. Obviously, you have noticed that the croissant functions as a sort of symbol of Christian triumph over Islam?” I affirmed this was so. Then he said, “And how remarkable that it should be shaped like a symbol of the enemy’s—that its symbol is an appropriation! Indeed, can you think of any other instance of a pastry shaped by such symbolic appropriation?”

Instantly, I suggested the hamantasch: a triangle-shaped filled-pocket pastry (usually the filling is some sort of jam or chocolate) that Ashkenazis traditionally eat on the Jewish holiday of Purim commemorating the salvation recounted in the Book of Esther, which, according to at least one very popular (albeit, dubious) account takes its shape from a three-cornered hat worn by Haman the Agagite (the book’s chief villain.) In response, Bibfeldt, who I assumed had been anticipating this very answer (their being few pastries that could have satisfied the terms of his question) asked how I thought Ashkenazis long-endeared to the hamantasch might respond “if someone who was perhaps utterly unfamiliar with the popular tradition associated with the pastry and Jewish dietary law besides suggested the idea of a hamantasch filled with a spiced pork mince—a variation of sorts on pâté à la viande.” “Obviously,” I said, “they would find the idea obscene.” “Yes,” Bibfeldt said, “That is exactly the case. Delicious as a triangular pâté à la viande might be, they would probably find it obscene. And why? Because what was supposed to be an appropriated symbol of the enemy transformed for triumphal consumption would become, by being filled with pork mince, returned, as it were, into the enemy’s hands. It would amount to giving Haman’s hat back to him while saying, ‘Excuse me noble sir, you dropped this’: a symbolic reversal tantamount to a capitulation.”

Then Bibfeldt proceeded, saying, “But returning to the pastry of our concern, that is, the pistachio croissant. Have you ever considered—” But before he could finish, I cut him off, saying, “Yes, I understand now, pistachios—they’re from the Middle East and Central Asia.” “Yes!” Bibfeldt said, “If I remember correctly, they were even grown in the Hanging Gardens of Babylon during the reign of Marduk-apla-iddina II. In Second Kings he is called Berodachbaladan. The prophet Isaiah complains that Hezekiah the Son of Ahaz entertained his messengers a bit too lavishly.” But at this point Bibfeldt paused. His gaze, it seemed, had fallen to something utterly engrossing beneath my table. “What’s that in your pants?” he said. “That outline. Yes—it’s unmistakable. You have cigarettes.” Naturally, I was happy to oblige and the conversation continued. “Well,” I said, “I guess that solves the mystery. Clearly, it must be the case that a pistachio croissant is something like a pork mince hamantasch: a sort of symbolic self-defeating obscenity.”

Bibfeldt looked at me disappointedly. “Solves?” he said. “That is only the beginning of the matter. The more interesting thing, the mystery is why here in the New World the pistachio croissant is anything but an obscenity. Why are you, here and now, able to buy a pistachio croissant? Don’t you think there is something in that? Indeed, doesn’t this whole discussion of a symbol of the other appropriated in triumph, but then augmented with the addition of yet another symbol of the other bring anything to mind?”

In trying to respond, I racked my brains for a while. At first, owing to the narrow sphere of concern the conversation had thus far been limited to (at least, on my end), I had busied myself with thoughts of pastries that might meet the description. Then grasping yet further for an answer, I had begun considering other sorts of things: other baked goods beyond the realm of pastry and then drinks and then even children’s toys. But all this searching was to no avail! Indeed, as I was about to realize, I had been looking for motes and ignoring the beam! (Or rather two beams.)

“The crucifix,” Bibfeldt whispered (though with a look that could have fit a yell). And immediately, I blanched. I was embarrassed. How could I have been so stupid as to struggle with such a simple question? But in any case, seeing my manifest embarrassment, Bibfeldt relaxed his countenance somewhat and continued, saying, “On the crucifix there is the figure of Christ crucified: the corpus. And whether a church uses it rather than the plain, or ‘empty,’ cross signifies much about its theological emphases. That is, the latter emphasizes Our Savior’s victory over Death whereas the former emphasizes His suffering, sacrifice, and love. Of course, virtually every church that uses either symbol believes in all these things. But the difference is that for some churches the corpus is the very last thing they want on their identifying symbol. Indeed, they argue that since Christ is resurrected that the cross is, in a profound sense, properly empty and should be displayed as such—that to augment it with the corpus does not help the symbol convey its proper meaning. The question is then—why do the churches that make use of the crucifix not have this perfectly reasonable objection? Is it that this symbolic interpretation has simply never occurred to them? Of course not. Rather it is that they have taken this symbolic element, which one would think implies a defeat, and they have appropriated it as well! They say, as it were, ‘Christ has conquered Death, so we have plundered the riches of Death, including that most potent symbol Death could ever have—the suffering and death of our bodily God.’ What better symbol could Death have for itself than that? And so, it is exactly that symbol that these churches have taken and made their own.

“But to do this is not simply a matter of performing a symbolic appropriation from the other twice. No, it is more profound than that, I suspect. You are familiar no doubt with Kierkegaard’s notion of the ‘double-movement’? That movement wherein one first renounces worldly hope—hope for the good in the here as opposed to the hereafter and thereby becomes a sort of knight, as it were, of ‘infinite resignation’—but then does not stop there, but rather continues to renounce hopelessness and reason and embraces the irrational and the absurd, and in that embrace has a hope again in that thing beyond all else: the hopeless hope, that is, the absurd hope beyond hope that is faith. By virtue of this movement, Kierkegaard says, Abraham was willing to Sacrifice his son and, in that willingness—and not in spite of it—know nonetheless that somehow God would not break his promise. He was ready to sacrifice Isaac and knew all the same that he would have Isaac and Isaac would live ‘by virtue of the absurd.’⁷

“Yes, in the cross, there is the resignation of the world. It is an instrument of death. It is the thing our God goes on to die. The knight of infinite resignation carries the cross as his sword. But with the addition of the corpus, something extraordinary happens. Imagine the figure of our knight. By what analogy could we convey the profundity of the change our knight undergoes to make the second movement? I would say, picture our knight skewering himself. Picture our knight crucified. But then picture our knight going on nonetheless. It is an absurdity! But that is the point. To appropriate the image of your dead God utterly, to identify with it, to say, ‘This is me,’ allows our skewered knight the breath to make that triumphal cry: ‘In a dead God is my living God!’ Yes, by virtue of this absurdity—wherein these opposites, resignation and hope, life and death are bound together—does the crucifix possess its symbolic potency.”

At this point, Bibfeldt, rather than being breathless or in any way ready to wind down seemed all the more excited, all the more internally agitated to a high philosophical pitch: his eyes glittered like celestial bodies behind the cigarette smoke he had been steadily producing with an increasing number of my cigarettes (which granted his performance just then I judged to be infinitely well-worth the sacrifice of my very finite stock). Indeed, he did not then stop to ascertain if I had comprehended his meaning, but plowed onward, saying, “And given this, why do you think the pistachio croissant is so delightful to Americans? To you? Why now? Why here in the New World?”

I did not quite know what to say. I began with some remarks on America’s “unique relationship to the Middle East,” mumbled something about “The War on Terror,” and was even beginning to say something about “the tumultuous coloring of the ongoing New York City mayoral election,” before Bibfeldt thankfully stopped me, saying, “No, no, think—on a deeper level what is the croissant to you? To Americans?” But he did not stop to let me answer. Rather, he continued, saying, “Obviously, we already know that the croissant for Europeans, particularly the French, represents the Islamic world. But does it represent the Islamic world in detail, or rather the Old World’s historic enemy? Their other, as it were? Is that not more plausible? Simpler? Indeed, it is almost certainly the case because what the croissant represents to you is not Islam—Americans did not start chowing down on croissants after 9/11 or in the wake of the 1958 Lebanon Crisis, they began much earlier and when they did, the croissant was unmistakably a pastry of the Old World. It was for your world, a symbol of the other already.”

I was intrigued by this new notion, but before I could respond, Bibfeldt continued, saying, “Did you know that the Americas, this New World, was not always called by that name? In a letter to the nurse of Prince John written around 1500, Christopher Columbus describes this new land he was discovering as an ‘otro mundo,’ that is, ‘other world.’⁸ This is no accident. America plays the role of a sort of other with respect to the Old World. But does that mean the croissant is simply a symbol for the Old World? No, not at all!

“You are not disconnected from Europe. It is not alien to you. Some part of it is part of you in spite of your difference. Something in you knows that the croissant, which now symbolizes in a sense the other for you symbolizes nonetheless another other. Therefore, I wager, the pistachio croissant is not as simple as it seems to Americans. At some level, you know that to combine pistachio and croissant involves a sort of double-movement. And yet, it cannot be as simple as that. No! In your embrace of it—in the New World’s embrace—there is entailed something else still: a movement that makes this integration of the pistachio both possible and simply delightful. That is, the pistachio croissant, for you, I say, entails a ‘triple-movement!’”

Bibfeldt leaned back and looked upward into the now opaque firmament constituting the view over Washington, DC where the terrestrial light is not so strong as it is in New York to actually light the night sky, but strong enough nonetheless to dull the stars. He took a drag. Just then, I was about to ask what on earth he meant by ‘triple-movement.’ But then he began yet again, saying, “No doubt, you are confused. If a double movement entails first, resignation, and then, absurd faith, what then could the third movement be? I will explain, but it will be difficult. You will have to bear with me. At some point between the first and third centuries—I’m inclined to think earlier rather than later—after the birth of our Lord, there lived in Alexandria, per Zosimos of Panopolis, a woman: a wise woman. Some call her Maria Hebraea, others Maria Prophetissa, which I prefer—and our ‘other’ brothers abroad, Māriyya al-Qibṭiyya. She was an alchemist of the highest rank. Her most famous precept, which ran through the whole golden movement of alchemy writ large for well over a millennium was this: ‘One becomes Two, Two becomes Three, and Three becomes the Fourth as the First.’

“The Jungian interpretation of this is that the one corresponds to a sort of unconscious wholeness, the second a thing in conflict with the first, which is its opposite and therefore a signifier of conflict, and the third a sort of resolving or transcending thing that is other than the duality preceding it and by being other than that duality allows for the reconciliation of all the terms with that resulting reconciliation being a sort of mirror of that which was at first. Jung himself explains that the even numbers are feminine—personified by the serpens mercurii or תְּהוֹם [Tehom] of the Bible or Tiamat of the Babylonian creation myth and that the uneven numbers are masculine and correspond more or less to the Father and Son of the Christian Trinity, and, he continues, if one were so disposed, one could read into this precept the foundational theomachy, the Begetting of the Son, and so on.⁹ It’s all quite convoluted, even for me. But the essential idea is sound enough: it is basically, after all, the Hegelian dialectic.

“So, bearing that all in mind, I’ll ask you a riddle. Pretend I’m a sphinx because I am! What is other to another that also has its other, but somehow also new? Oh, I will not waste your time! Beforehand, I told you that Columbus called this land ‘otro mundo’ in 1500 and yet a mere three years later—and it is no coincidence it was three—Amerigo Vespucci wrote a letter to Lorenzo di Pier Francesco de' Medici—and what was this letter about? What did it proclaim? Published in Latin the following year, the fourth year! its title—its immortal title—was ‘Mundus Novus’! New World! That is to say, yes! Yes, I am sure you have already guessed: The pistachio croissant is, in America, a sort of symbol of the transcendent synthesis, the fourth in its return as the first, the reconciliation of the conflict of the Old World, that transcendent reconciliation possible not there, but in an other place, a new place, this place! And it is not simply a thing to be gawped at. No, it is, I’d say, more than a mere symbol. It is a thing you eat. A thing that becomes part of you, but in doing so makes you party to the answer of its question, its mystery—its answer that puts you, what you are, in question!”

In saying this Bibfedlt leaned back again and seemed very satisfied with himself (or at least his explanation). Meanwhile, awed as I was by this display of dialectical pyrotechnics, I was not quite convinced. And after a moment to get my words together, I said so, saying, “Is it though? Are all these things really the case? Does everything follow? Is the pistachio croissant really the Pastry at the End of History, a double-baked eucharist with a sort of transcendental filling to be offered to Fukuyama’s last man that he might be reborn anew? I mean—really, your whole argument seems to rely on airily sketched conceptions and the most dubious assumptions! Just consider the croissant: some of the French say it’s a sort of edible symbol of a Christian victory—but, as I’ve already said—no one seems to know for sure which Christian victory that was and the historical evidence we have for the basis of the croissant seems to cast doubt on the whole story. And that’s just the croissant! Why are we taking it for granted that pistachios function in this context as a symbol of Islam in France? After all, they’ve been in Europe at least since Rome! And then there’s the whole business of these movements, one after the other until they all apparently stumble and fall on their face! That is, what I’m saying, and I hope you’ll forgive me for saying it, is that this all seems like an arbitrary jumble shoved together for the sole purpose of making a sort of Sinai out of a mole hill!”

I expected Bibfeldt to be taken aback by this. In fact, I was quite worried just then that I had gone far beyond the bounds of decorum. But Bibfeldt quickly allayed my fears. He smiled and vented a peal or two of hardy Teutonic laughter (which was infectious) at the conclusion of which, he responded to me, saying, “Don’t you think moles would make themselves a Sinai if they could? Well, let me tell you a story about myself. It’s embarrassing, but I think it will illustrate my point. How do I begin? Well, let me ask you, what year is it?” “2025,” I said. “Yes,” he said, “2025 Anno Domini. And before that there are the years Ante Christum Natum, that is, ‘before Christ.’ The former are counted going forward and the latter going backward. Simple enough, right?” I answered in the affirmative. He continued, saying, “When I was a young student at the University of Worms, I thought so too. But then I realized that between the first year B.C. and the last year A.D., something was missing. One of my acolytes puts it this way: imagine you were a man in 1 B.C. going to a New Year’s party. You get nice and drunk. One moment, you are a full year before Christ, and then in a flash, a bang, a boom you're in the first year of the Christian Era with nothing in between. It’s preposterous! The whole of our history, our calendar, our thinking about the past was muddled, I realized, by this missing middle—the Year Zero!”

“Suddenly, everything began to fall into place. The rise of man, the invention of fire, the procession of equinoxes, the names of the Roman Emperors, the Tikal–Calakmul wars, the King Wen sequence of the I Ching, the Protestant Reformation—all these things, these facts, these bits of trivia hitherto hanging about in the annals of history suddenly were connected and radiated like ripples from this still point, this hidden center—this eye in the historiological storm. So, I wrote my dissertation on it and though it was not well received at the time, it steadily garnered me followers and even fame of a sort. Indeed, there was a time in some parts of Germany when no bold student would bother with Hegel or Vico, but would simply go to the counter of a university bookstore, eye the proprietor, and—if his eye was deemed sufficiently bold—receive a pirated copy of my dissertation along with the whisper, ‘von einem Freund der Beschnittenen!’ Yes, it was the basis of my philosophical career. Isn’t that incredible?”

I affirmed that it really was incredible and he continued, saying, “And yet, recently, I discovered something: this Year Zero, this missing middle, this still point in the turning wheel of time that made sense of a thousand mysteries, the date of Christ’s Nativity—was not actually that. That is, based on a careful reading of the Gospels, particularly some clever calculations regarding the Star of Bethlehem, it is now abundantly clear to scholars that the year zero was not the date of Christ’s Nativity, which we now know probably took place two to four years earlier. Indeed, some scholars even say it was as early as 6 B.C. ‘How could this be?’ I thought at first. I assumed there must have been some sort of profound error: that the scholars were wrong. But I checked and double-checked and reviewed the scholarship and as far as I can tell, the Year Zero is, in fact, one of the few years in which our Lord could not possibly have been born. Yes, the Year Zero is where it is and there is no getting around it. The meaning of history revolves around it and nevertheless it is manifestly in the wrong place. That is to say, it is in a place that seems utterly arbitrary.”

In response to all this, I said—quite hastily in retrospect—“Well, couldn’t you just move the Year Zero back a few years and see where the meaning falls?” But to this Bibfeldt shook his head in the negative, saying, “No! Indeed, just because it is arbitrary does not mean that it is not just as meaningful as I had supposed.” “What?” I said, “That’s ridiculous, A thing is meaningful because it ultimately means something at the end of the day. It has to have that something as its basis.”

Then Bibfeldt—visibly full of emotion, wildly straining his brow—said, “Consider then the actual date of the Nativity, whatever it is. You would say it’s meaningful?” And I said, “Yes, of course. That date holds meaning. It’s ultimately tied to a profound occurrence.” “And yet,” Bibfedlt said, “that date is so because God chose it to be that day. He could have chosen another day for such a good thing to happen. Even if it is the case as some theologians say that the Nativity was prefigured by a thousand developments and that it occurred exactly when it did in accordance with a plan in the works since the beginning of Creation—a thing quite likely considering the Star of Bethlehem’s appearance at just the right moment—even then, God, being omnipotent could have made it so that it happened the next day or even the next year or even yesterday. Ultimately, the date of the Nativity is arbitrary.”

This point, I conceded with a qualification, saying, “Yes, I suppose the date of the Nativity is arbitrary. But arbitrary only in the sense that God’s decisions are not governed by anything other than His will and that’s a very big ‘but’ indeed. When you or I act arbitrarily, we act with a particular arbitrariness. But when God acts arbitrarily, His actions have an absolute arbitrariness, which is to say, they have an absolute weight to them. Our arbitrary choices couldn’t compare: they’re like chaff in the wind! And that is just what we mean when we usually say something is arbitrary—which is to say, God’s arbitrary choices are not arbitrary in any sense that really makes sense.”

Then Bibfeldt said, “Are you so sure? Consider—if our arbitrary choices could not be meaningful then what exactly is our freedom to choose? What’s the point of it? In Eden, before man fell, before he knew anything of morality, when he was beyond good and evil, as it were, he still made choices—completely arbitrary choices—and he made these choices because he was free: because he was made in God’s image. What did God give man that freedom for? Why did God give man that freedom even though He knew man would almost immediately fall because of it? Do you think He would have bothered to give us freedom if it were meaningless? If our choices could not be absolutely meaningful? Consider—the world means something. Doesn’t it? It must. But the world is because God chose arbitrarily to make it so. The world does not need to exist. Meaning does not need to exist. There could be nothing rather than something, but there is something and that something has its ultimate root in an ultimately arbitrary—a necessarily arbitrary—choice. Unless, of course, you think God was compelled by something beyond himself? Do you imagine that God must conform to some sort of reason to satisfy your picture of a reasonable world? The world is not like that. God does not play by the rules, He makes them and He makes them arbitrarily and even though He makes them arbitrarily they are meaningful. That you care about reason is proof of its meaning. Do not deny it! But that there is no higher reason for reason means that meaning is ultimately unreasonable.”

In response to all this, I was dumbfounded for a moment or so, but in my usual fashion I began to object, saying to Bibfeldt, among other things, that I was sure his reasoning was off somehow, that at best it was the sort of argument that impresses rather than persuades and that in any case even if his argument were more or less solid, that it would only be solid as that, an argument, and that it could not change the meaningfulness of things in the real world. Bibfeldt, however, was admirably nonplussed. He simply said, “well, speaking of real meaning, there is still a very real pistachio croissant on your plate.” And indeed, I looked down and it was still there and I realized that I had not taken a bite of it since our conversation had started. “Do you really think,” I said, “that all this will make any difference? That it will change my experience of this pistachio croissant? That I’ll bite into it and experience some sort of profound mystery—even though I’ve already tasted it and experienced nothing like that whatsoever?”

Then Bibfeldt looked not at me, but at the pistachio croissant, seeming to eye it with a special curiosity: an endearingly sincere sort of childlike wonder. Then he said, “Do you think Abraham, who did not have the benefit of Revelation, would have understood the meaning of the cross?” And I objected, saying, “That is hardly a fitting comparison and what’s more it’s almost sacrilegious.” But then Bibfeldt looked up and fixed me in the eyes with an inexpressible look of kindness. It was extraordinary. I’d never have thought his eyes could look like that. Then he drew my attention to his hand and gestured to the pistachio croissant, saying, “Taste and see.”

1. For more information on the War of the Babenberg Succession, see Nora Berend, Przemysław Urbańczyk, and Przemysław Wiszewski’s Central Europe in the High Middle Ages: Bohemia, Hungary, and Poland c. 900 – c. 1300

2. For more information on the Siege of Vienna, see John Stoye’s The Siege of Vienna: The Last Great Trial Between Cross & Crescent.

3. Not to be confused with the Rabbi of the same name involved with the Jewish Reform movement.

4. Technically, Montagne wrote the book merely ‘in collaboration’ with Gottschalk.

5. For more (dubious, albeit entertaining) information on the history of the croissant, see David Halliday’s The Bloody History of the Croissant.

6. For more information on Franz Bibfeldt, see Martin E. Marty and Jerald C. Brauer’s The Unrelieved Paradox: Studies in the Theology of Franz Bibfeldt.

7. See Kierkegaard’s Fear and Trembling.

8. See R.H. Major’s Select Letters of Christopher Columbus.

9. For more information on the Jungian understanding of the Axiom of Maria, see Daryl Sharp’s Jung Lexicon as well as Jung’s own Psychology and Alchemy.