On my 12th day of Christmas...
We had our family Christmas today. It was wonderful! So great to be home with family! We looked up the 12 days of Christmas and the meaning behind it. My sister and Bobby were like, "Why would you get your true love 9 ladies dancing?" That's like getting dancing girls. Ha... now it makes sense!
You're all familiar with the Christmas song, "The Twelve Days of
Christmas" I think. To most it's a delightful nonsense rhyme
set to music. But it had a quite serious purpose when it was written.
It is a good deal more than just a repetitious melody with pretty
phrases and a list of strange gifts.
Catholics in England during the period 1558 to 1829, when Parliament
finally emancipated Catholics in England, were
prohibited from ANY practice of their faith by law - private OR public.
It was a crime to BE a Catholic.
"The Twelve Days of Christmas" was written in England as one of the
"catechism songs" to help young Catholics learn the
tenets of their faith - a memory aid, when to be caught with anything in
*writing* indicating adherence to the Catholic faith
could not only get you imprisoned, it could get you hanged, or shortened
by a head - or hanged, drawn and quartered, a rather
peculiar and ghastly punishment I'm not aware was ever practiced
anywhere else. Hanging, drawing and quartering involved
hanging a person by the neck until they had almost, but not quite,
suffocated to death; then the party was taken down from the
gallows, and disembowelled while still alive; and while the entrails
were still lying on the street, where the executioners stomped
all over them, the victim was tied to four large farm horses, and
literally torn into five parts - one to each limb and the remaining
torso.
The songs gifts are hidden meanings to the teachings of the faith. The
"true love" mentioned in the song doesn't refer to an
earthly suitor, it refers to God Himself. The "me" who receives the
presents refers to every baptized person. The partridge in a
pear tree is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In the song, Christ is
symbolically presented as a mother partridge which feigns
injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings, much in memory of
the expression of Christ's sadness over the fate of
Jerusalem: "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How often would I have sheltered thee
under my wings, as a hen does her chicks, but thou
wouldst not have it so..."
The other symbols mean the following:
2 Turtle Doves = The Old and New Testaments
3 French Hens = Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues
4 Calling Birds = the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists
5 Golden Rings = The first Five Books of the Old Testament, the
"Pentateuch", which gives the history of man's fall from grace.
6 Geese A-laying = the six days of creation
7 Swans A-swimming = the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven
sacraments
8 Maids A-milking = the eight beatitudes
9 Ladies Dancing = the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit
10 Lords A-leaping = the ten commandments
11 Pipers Piping = the eleven faithful apostles
12 Drummers Drumming = the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's
Creed
Well, that sums up my 12 days of Christmas. Everyone have a very Merry Christmas!!
