12 days xmas

As near as I can tell this is the 7th day of the twelve days of Christmas.  To me New Year’s has always been an intrusion into the holiday rather than a part of it but that’s just me.  Staying up until midnight to watch a tick on the clock change has never had much appeal.  But the twelve days of Christmas is different and thinking about the song of the same name is fascinating as well.  I never thought of it before but I heard an English Broadcast recording of a song in which what it really means to get a partridge in a pear every day for 12 days really is like.  At the end there are 364 presents.  There are 40 maids milking and one assumes that means there are 40 cows too.  It is a fun exercise.  Some have given it a more ominous and serious tone.  A catholic priest who believes it is a teaching song so that Catholics could remember the faith even when they were being persecuted by the church of England wrote this……………..



The idea has fallen out of favor for a very simple reason.  There is nothing in the song that an Anglican wouldn’t agree with and so the need to somehow keep these tenants of the faith hidden is nonsense; but who wants to be a scrooge on Christmas