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THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS |
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Written by Dr. Jack Wheeler
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Wednesday, 22 December 2010 |
I want to wish you the Merriest of Christmases this Saturday,
but according to the song, the First Day of Christmas is the day after
Christmas, December 26.
Ancient Christians celebrated "The Holidays," as our militant secularists
insist on referring to them now, starting with the day after the birth of Jesus
and ending on January 6th with the visit of the Magi in Matthew 2:11
known as the Epiphany. Start with 12/26 and end with 1/6 and you get: the
Twelve Days of Christmas.
You may be really tired of hearing Christmas songs by now, including this one,
yet you may still be wondering what the heck partridges in a pear tree and
eight maids a-milking have to do with the birth of the founder of Christianity.
So I thought we might take a break from Serious Thoughts
About World Events, and take a look at the song's origin, meaning, and current
urban myth.
The earliest printed version of The Twelve Days of Christmas is in a children's
book published in London in 1790, Mirth
Without Mischief. It is called a "memory and forfeits" game
played by children in the form of a song, where the leader recites a verse,
each player in turn repeats it, the leader keeps adding verses until a player's
memory fails him/her and has to forfeit a piece of candy (if a girl, a kiss on
the leader's cheek).
Kids in 18th Century England,
however, learned the game from French kids, who had been singing their version,
"In Those Twelve Days" since at least 1625. We know the song was
originally French, as for example, partridges were introduced into England
from France in
the 1770s.
Even though The Twelve Days of Christmas was a kids' song-game, it nonetheless
had a deep religious meaning. Unlike the PC Happy Holidays of today, centuries
ago Christmas was above all a religious celebration. All of the song's twelve
gifts are Christian symbols.
On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me...
A Christian's "true love" is God.
A partridge in a pear tree...
The partridge is Jesus; the pear tree stands for the Cross. The French revered
the mother partridge, which would feign injury to draw predators away from her
nest and willing to sacrifice herself for the life of her children, and used
the bird as a symbol for Jesus who lamented in Matthew 24:37: "O Jerusalem...
How often would I have sheltered thee under my wings, as a hen does her chicks,
but thou wouldst not have it so."
Why a pear tree? Because it's a song in English full of alliteration:
partridge-pear, two-turtle, maids-milking, swans-swimming, lords-leaping,
pipers-piping, drummers-drumming.
On the second day...two turtle doves...
The sacrifice Joseph and Mary made for Jesus (they actually sacrifice two
turtle doves in Luke 2:24). The
French original refers to the two gifts of the Old and New Testaments.
On the third day...three French hens...
The three things that abideth of I Corinthians 13:13 -- faith, hope, and
charity. In the French original, the three persons of the Holy Trinity, the
Father, the Son, the Holy Ghost.
On the fourth day... four calling (in the English original,
"colly" or black) birds...
The four Evangelists and their Gospels, Matthew, Mark, Luke, John.
On the fifth day... five golden rings...
Not rings on your finger, but ring-necked pheasants in keeping with the bird
theme of the first seven verses; the Pentateuch, the first five books of the
Old Testament known collectively as the Books of Moses.
On the sixth day... six geese a-laying...
The six days of Creation.
On the seventh day... seven swans a-swimming...
The Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit, much discussed by Augustine and Aquinas:
wisdom, understanding, knowledge, counsel, fortitude, piety, and fear of the
Lord.
On the eighth day... eight maids a-milking...
The eight Beatitudes or those who are blessed from the Sermon on the Mount,
Matthew 5:3-10 (the poor in spirit, who mourn, the meek, who thirst for
righteousness, the merciful, the pure in heart, the peacemakers, who are
persecuted for righteousness).
On the ninth day... nine ladies a-dancing...
The nine fruits of the Holy Spirit listed in Galatians 5:22-23: "But the
fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, longsuffering, gentleness, goodness,
faith, meekness, temperance: against such there is no law."
On the tenth day...ten lords a-leaping...
The Ten Commandments.
On the eleventh day... eleven pipers piping...
The eleven loyal Disciples. We all know what happened to the twelfth.
On the twelfth day...twelve drummers drumming...
The twelve points of The
Apostle's Creed.
That's the meaning. Now on to the myth.
There is an "urban legend" floating in the Internet ether that the
Twelve Days is a Catholic protest song, a secret catechism sung by English
Catholics after Elizabeth I
abolished "the old worship" in 1559, forbidding the open practice of
Roman Catholicism (finally repealed by Parliament in 1829).
Yet all twelve enumerated gifts of the song were believed in common by both
Catholics and Anglicans -- there is nothing in it exclusively Catholic needing
to be secret and hidden. Further, the song originated in France,
not England.
This myth was created by a Byzantine Catholic priest in Granville,
New York named Hal Stockert in 1995. He
claimed he had done all sorts of research in 16th Century Latin texts and
letters from Irish priests. When pressed to provide it, his dog had devoured
his homework: "All of my notes were ruined when our church had a plumbing
leak and the basement flooded."
Oh, he did make an electronic copy, but sadly it is on "a computer floppy
disk that is so old that nobody has a machine that can read it
anymore." Hey, Hal: you're
lying.
I have to tell you it was my son Jackson who gave me the idea to write this.
The most wonderful Christmas present a man can have is his family and I am
truly blessed with mine. Christmas gives us the opportunity to reflect upon and
appreciate the blessings we all have in our lives. Merry Christmas -- all the
way to January 6th.
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