Tintin Forums

You don't have to be Catholic to call a priest "father", it's just being polite I would think.
Although given Tintin's background it would be more than likely that he was at least brought up religious, like Herge himself (not necessarily practising/believing though, just nominally, which people still would have had to be).

Now I don't know my walloons from my pantaloons but does Tintin's belgian nationality suggest that the feast of St Nicholas would be a bigger celebratory event for him than Christmas itself?

Some of the early editions of the Belgian French-language (ie Walloon) edition of "Tintin Magazine" did feature St Nicholas, especially in the early December issues of 1946, 1948 and the early 1950s (but I'm afraid that I cannot find any links to examples which the moderators may consider legit).

It's a funny thing, but the Christmas editions of "Tintin Magazine" tended to vary the atmosphere of their covers:

This edition from 1949 has Tintin, Haddock, Jo, Zette, Blake, Mortimer and many others dancing round a tree, while this one from 1953 is more solemn, with what looks like Tintin and his friends trailing through the snow late at night, bearing gifts for what may be a poor local family (like Good King Wenceslas, really). Some kind of hint about charity I suppose.

(I think these links to ComicVine.com are legit.)

Actually, I think the stable door of the foreground design is meant to suggest that Tintin and his friends are approaching the Nativity stable, rather than just a local poor family. The fact that Tintin's bringing a lamb, in the manner of a shepherd boy from many a Nativity scene and many a Christmas carol, reinforces this impression. But I'd guess it's intentionally meant to be read both ways, with the Nativity story and everyday charity being symbolically and morally connected. The star, clearly a cardboard one hung up on a string, but appearing to be in the sky, and the stable door looking fairly modern seem to stress this deliberate merging of the modern and the biblical.

The mix of artistic styles is interesting too, with the framed Tintin scene being in the style of Hergé (and possibly drawn by him) and the forground stable door looking more like the work of one of the other artists on the magazine, such as Jacques Martin, perhaps.

The lamb is highly symbolic in Catholicism as well, Lamb of God, etc.
Calculus is like a wise man following his pendulum instead of the star above Bethlehem...

There's something about the fence that bothers me though, it doesn't really fit a nativity scene.

Of course, neither do a Belgian reporter, alcoholic merchant navy captain, absent-minded professor and two bumbling detectives. I can ignore that for some reason though.

Maybe Herge didn't want to overdo it with the catholic imagery in the printed albums, since that would have detracted from sales abroad. Thus he did a fair number of postcards for Belgium and France, but opted to leave Catholicism and Christianity largely out of the Tintin albums