Snooze Alarm
Hello World,
Well, here we are, having arrived at that day that has been almost universally considered Christmas Eve (which is technically on Saturday, not Friday) by all and sundry, as businesses everywhere closed up shop early, and sent their grateful employees out into the wide world to relax, shop, or get an early start on the holiday spirits at their local pub. I know this is true, because I was the only person in the world still working today after 3PM, and every place I tried to call on the phone was long since closed, if they even opened at all today. Where Bill works, they had the entire day off, and only the petty and captious would begrudge those hard-working folks some well-deserved time off, while others of us were filling in for absent co-workers and putting in long hours trying to do two jobs at once. But that is all behind us now, and we can join in with the joyful spirit of the season, with chestnuts roasting on an open fire, angels we have heard on high, walking in a winter wonderland, candles in the window and carols at the spinet, fa la la la la la la la la.
A couple of weeks ago in the local area, all the media was agog with the news of an impending ice storm that was supposed to crash upon us on Thursday night and usher in untold disasters of epic proportions, especially on top of the snow we still had piled up everywhere, since it had been much too cold to melt. Everyone braced for the worst, events were canceled all over the place (including a holiday dinner by one of our other vendors) and people planned to stay home from work or school on Friday. The laugh was on us when the predicted ice storm fizzled in the face of 50 degree temperatures, leaving us with nothing but pouring rain that had the added benefit of melting most of the snow that had seemed so intractable the day before. Luckily it did, because as they reported on the news later, if all of that rain had been snow instead, we would have had accumulations between 12 to 18 inches throughout the region. You know I always say the good thing about rain, no matter how much you have, you don't have to shovel it.
It's obvious that they have no real ability to gaze into the future in the meteorological realm, or perhaps they simply have the wrong people trying their hands at it. Apparently the folks putting together the TV Section in our local newspaper have more of a bead on upcoming events, as evidenced by this startling observation in last week's Sports Highlights: "There's been plenty of unappealing nationally televised NFL games recently (witness tomorrow's Green Bay-Baltimore snoozer) ... " Somehow they already knew on Saturday that a game to be played the following day was not only going to be uninteresting, but also have no unexpected or exciting moments. If only ESPN had known that ahead of time, I'm sure they could have scheduled something else more thrilling, or at the very least, asked the Packers and Ravens to spice up their game with some trick plays, contests or ad hoc nudity. Who's snoozing now, TV Section?
Not to pick on our local newspaper, The Journal News (their motto: "When News Breaks, We're Glued To It") but also on Saturday in their Real Estate section, they ran a story about what to expect when buying a "fixer-upper" and helpfully provided pictures to illustrate their points. Under one picture, the caption read, "The small bedroom in Ossinng features pealing paint, non-insulated windows and cracked floor tiles." When I pointed out to Bill that the paint was "pealing," he replied, "Bing bong." This must be catching, because at almost the same moment, I got a note from a colleague that insisted, "A peak into your life is a special treat for me." I'm at a loss to understand what piqued her interest in peeking at my peaks, but there you have it. Also coming up short in the Spot That Homonym contest were some people who should have known better, and editing our church newsletter (feel free to visit our web site at www.holytrinitynewrochelle.org) with this alarming statement: "The Church Council has authorized the purchase of a three seat plastic coated steal bench to be permanently installed in the Prayer Garden." I certainly hope they do permanently install it before someone steals it, and not afterward. Otherwise, it couldn't help but be, in the immortal words of our TV Section, a snoozer, and of course, they would have seen that one coming.
And what of the colley birds, you may be asking yourselves? Well, we have Bill to thank for the following information, which he described as more of a can of worms than two pairs of song birds, for all his trouble. Of course, anything that's so old (and some scholars identify elements of The Twelve Days of Christmas going back more than four centuries) is bound to collect a welter of folklore, misinformation, misinterpretation and downright fraud along the way. (Various web sites are strongly divided on the validity of the claim that the song was turned into a Catholic catechism used during the Commonwealth in England when Cromwell banned religious instruction.) However, the colley birds did turn up in most versions of the old lyrics, although if you listen to recordings of the carol now, you can plainly hear the singers say "calling birds" instead. It's at the upper reaches of the days (from 7 and above) where the verses differ wildly from what we expect, with the leaping lords and piping pipers being replaced variously with hares a-running, bells a-ringing and cocks a-crowing, among other diverse offerings. But the lower number days have a consistency that has stood the test of time, although not without their own mis-translations:
===================================
Partridge, in common with many other speckled birds, was an emblem of the evil one. Pear tree has some magical properties associated with Christmas Eve, although pear tree—perdrix (pertriz) in the French version—carried into the English language may have sounded like pear tree, ‘joli perdrix’ is a ‘pretty juniper’ or ‘part of a juniper tree’.
Two turtle doves obviously has some reference to the ‘true loves’. Having started with birds, thereafter birds were variously listed.
French Hens may simply mean rare (or foreign) fowl.
Colley-birds arc blackbirds.
Gold rings—it seems likely that as this comes among the list of birds it may mean ‘goldspinks' which are goldfinches.
===================================
On the anti-catechism side of things, the researchers generally agree that this type of song was commonly used as part of a game of "Forfeits" where people would entertain themselves with contests or competitions in convivial gatherings. Using this song as a test of memory, one person begins with the first verse, then the next person gives the first and second verses, the next person does the first three, then four, and so on, until someone forgets a verse and loses, or forfeits a trifling gift to the hostess. Our friends at the musicdish industry e-journal put it this way:
====================================
Twelve Days of Christmas," Traditional, 16th Century.
Okay, let's get the two most popular myths out of the way: the dozen days are December 26 through January 6, and there is no hidden religious meaning to the lyrics. It's simply a song that's also a memory game. Little brother sings a line, you sing two lines, Aunt Lucy sings three lines, and so on around the room. This passed for a good time in 1590. The "four calling birds" are another popular misconception. It's actually "four colley birds" (or blackbirds). Besides the seven swans a-swimming and six geese a-laying, there are more birds in the lyrics than you might think, as "five golden rings" actually refers to ring-necked birds, such as pheasants.
=====================================
There are many examples of these memory games or songs of this nature in historical records, and The Twelve Days could certainly be one of them. Or not, as the case might be, but the true answer to that may lie shrouded in mystery and lost to the mists of time. Not to mention, speckled birds in a juniper bush. And if even Bill can't get the poop, the whole poop, and nothing but the poop out of all this, then what hope do the rest of us have, I ask you that? I say we forget the whole thing and go have some candy canes and eggnog, and Happy Pheasants to All, and to All, a Good Night.
Well, here we are, having arrived at that day that has been almost universally considered Christmas Eve (which is technically on Saturday, not Friday) by all and sundry, as businesses everywhere closed up shop early, and sent their grateful employees out into the wide world to relax, shop, or get an early start on the holiday spirits at their local pub. I know this is true, because I was the only person in the world still working today after 3PM, and every place I tried to call on the phone was long since closed, if they even opened at all today. Where Bill works, they had the entire day off, and only the petty and captious would begrudge those hard-working folks some well-deserved time off, while others of us were filling in for absent co-workers and putting in long hours trying to do two jobs at once. But that is all behind us now, and we can join in with the joyful spirit of the season, with chestnuts roasting on an open fire, angels we have heard on high, walking in a winter wonderland, candles in the window and carols at the spinet, fa la la la la la la la la.
A couple of weeks ago in the local area, all the media was agog with the news of an impending ice storm that was supposed to crash upon us on Thursday night and usher in untold disasters of epic proportions, especially on top of the snow we still had piled up everywhere, since it had been much too cold to melt. Everyone braced for the worst, events were canceled all over the place (including a holiday dinner by one of our other vendors) and people planned to stay home from work or school on Friday. The laugh was on us when the predicted ice storm fizzled in the face of 50 degree temperatures, leaving us with nothing but pouring rain that had the added benefit of melting most of the snow that had seemed so intractable the day before. Luckily it did, because as they reported on the news later, if all of that rain had been snow instead, we would have had accumulations between 12 to 18 inches throughout the region. You know I always say the good thing about rain, no matter how much you have, you don't have to shovel it.
It's obvious that they have no real ability to gaze into the future in the meteorological realm, or perhaps they simply have the wrong people trying their hands at it. Apparently the folks putting together the TV Section in our local newspaper have more of a bead on upcoming events, as evidenced by this startling observation in last week's Sports Highlights: "There's been plenty of unappealing nationally televised NFL games recently (witness tomorrow's Green Bay-Baltimore snoozer) ... " Somehow they already knew on Saturday that a game to be played the following day was not only going to be uninteresting, but also have no unexpected or exciting moments. If only ESPN had known that ahead of time, I'm sure they could have scheduled something else more thrilling, or at the very least, asked the Packers and Ravens to spice up their game with some trick plays, contests or ad hoc nudity. Who's snoozing now, TV Section?
Not to pick on our local newspaper, The Journal News (their motto: "When News Breaks, We're Glued To It") but also on Saturday in their Real Estate section, they ran a story about what to expect when buying a "fixer-upper" and helpfully provided pictures to illustrate their points. Under one picture, the caption read, "The small bedroom in Ossinng features pealing paint, non-insulated windows and cracked floor tiles." When I pointed out to Bill that the paint was "pealing," he replied, "Bing bong." This must be catching, because at almost the same moment, I got a note from a colleague that insisted, "A peak into your life is a special treat for me." I'm at a loss to understand what piqued her interest in peeking at my peaks, but there you have it. Also coming up short in the Spot That Homonym contest were some people who should have known better, and editing our church newsletter (feel free to visit our web site at www.holytrinitynewrochelle.org) with this alarming statement: "The Church Council has authorized the purchase of a three seat plastic coated steal bench to be permanently installed in the Prayer Garden." I certainly hope they do permanently install it before someone steals it, and not afterward. Otherwise, it couldn't help but be, in the immortal words of our TV Section, a snoozer, and of course, they would have seen that one coming.
And what of the colley birds, you may be asking yourselves? Well, we have Bill to thank for the following information, which he described as more of a can of worms than two pairs of song birds, for all his trouble. Of course, anything that's so old (and some scholars identify elements of The Twelve Days of Christmas going back more than four centuries) is bound to collect a welter of folklore, misinformation, misinterpretation and downright fraud along the way. (Various web sites are strongly divided on the validity of the claim that the song was turned into a Catholic catechism used during the Commonwealth in England when Cromwell banned religious instruction.) However, the colley birds did turn up in most versions of the old lyrics, although if you listen to recordings of the carol now, you can plainly hear the singers say "calling birds" instead. It's at the upper reaches of the days (from 7 and above) where the verses differ wildly from what we expect, with the leaping lords and piping pipers being replaced variously with hares a-running, bells a-ringing and cocks a-crowing, among other diverse offerings. But the lower number days have a consistency that has stood the test of time, although not without their own mis-translations:
===================================
Partridge, in common with many other speckled birds, was an emblem of the evil one. Pear tree has some magical properties associated with Christmas Eve, although pear tree—perdrix (pertriz) in the French version—carried into the English language may have sounded like pear tree, ‘joli perdrix’ is a ‘pretty juniper’ or ‘part of a juniper tree’.
Two turtle doves obviously has some reference to the ‘true loves’. Having started with birds, thereafter birds were variously listed.
French Hens may simply mean rare (or foreign) fowl.
Colley-birds arc blackbirds.
Gold rings—it seems likely that as this comes among the list of birds it may mean ‘goldspinks' which are goldfinches.
===================================
On the anti-catechism side of things, the researchers generally agree that this type of song was commonly used as part of a game of "Forfeits" where people would entertain themselves with contests or competitions in convivial gatherings. Using this song as a test of memory, one person begins with the first verse, then the next person gives the first and second verses, the next person does the first three, then four, and so on, until someone forgets a verse and loses, or forfeits a trifling gift to the hostess. Our friends at the musicdish industry e-journal put it this way:
====================================
Twelve Days of Christmas," Traditional, 16th Century.
Okay, let's get the two most popular myths out of the way: the dozen days are December 26 through January 6, and there is no hidden religious meaning to the lyrics. It's simply a song that's also a memory game. Little brother sings a line, you sing two lines, Aunt Lucy sings three lines, and so on around the room. This passed for a good time in 1590. The "four calling birds" are another popular misconception. It's actually "four colley birds" (or blackbirds). Besides the seven swans a-swimming and six geese a-laying, there are more birds in the lyrics than you might think, as "five golden rings" actually refers to ring-necked birds, such as pheasants.
=====================================
There are many examples of these memory games or songs of this nature in historical records, and The Twelve Days could certainly be one of them. Or not, as the case might be, but the true answer to that may lie shrouded in mystery and lost to the mists of time. Not to mention, speckled birds in a juniper bush. And if even Bill can't get the poop, the whole poop, and nothing but the poop out of all this, then what hope do the rest of us have, I ask you that? I say we forget the whole thing and go have some candy canes and eggnog, and Happy Pheasants to All, and to All, a Good Night.
posted by El Tango Fandango @ 9:11 PM
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