I’ve never understood the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas.” Is
it supposed to mean the 12 days leading up to Christmas? Is it the 12 days
after Christmas? Is Christmas supposed to be celebrated like Hanukkah, but
instead of 8 nights it’s 12 days? How can the True Love afford all these
gifts of birds and people? (Not to mention that the song implies slavery is
going on - giving the gift of people?).
Of course, I was young when I first heard this song and we didn’t
have the internet or Wikipedia. Now, a quick Google search later and we have
the following:
The twelve days in the song are the twelve days starting Christmas
Day, or in some traditions, the day after Christmas (December 26) (Boxing Day
or St. Stephen's Day, as being the feast day of St. Stephen Protomartyr) to the
day before Epiphany, or the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6, or the Twelfth
Day). Twelfth Night is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "the
evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the
Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a
time of merrymaking."
Although the specific origins of the chant are not known, it
possibly began as a Twelfth Night "memories-and-forfeits" game, in
which a leader recited a verse, each of the players repeated the verse, the
leader added another verse, and so on until one of the players made a mistake,
with the player who erred having to pay a penalty, such as offering up a kiss
or a sweet. This is how the game is offered up in its earliest known printed
version, in the children's book Mirth without Mischief (c. 1780) published in
England, which 100 years later Lady Gomme, a collector of folktales and rhymes,
described playing every Twelfth Day night before eating mince pies and twelfth
cake.
So
there was 12 days of Christmas! I feel like I was cheated outta some gifts now!
We
used to play a game like this when I was in high school. Of course it was a
drinking game and no one could memorize it except for me, so I was always the
leader. It went, by round, as follows:
1.)
A
brown hen
2.)
A
brown hen, a couple of duck
3.)
A
brown hen, a couple of duck, three brown bear
4.)
A
brown hen, a couple of duck, three brown bear, four running hare
5.)
A
brown hen, a couple of duck, three brown bear, four running hare, five fat
fickle females sitting sipping scotch
6.)
A
brown hen, a couple of duck, three brown bear, four running hare, five fat
fickle females sitting sipping scotch, six simple Simons sitting on a fence
7.)
A
brown hen, a couple of duck, three brown bear, four running hare, five fat
fickle females sitting sipping scotch, six simple Simons sitting on a fence,
seven Sinbad sailors sailing the seven seas
8.)
A
brown hen, a couple of duck, three brown bear, four running hare, five fat
fickle females sitting sipping scotch, six simple Simons sitting on a fence,
seven Sinbad sailors sailing the seven seas, nine nude Nubians nibbling gnash
knuckles and nicotine
9.)
A
brown hen, a couple of duck, three brown bear, four running hare, five fat
fickle females sitting sipping scotch, six simple Simons sitting on a fence,
seven Sinbad sailors sailing the seven seas, nine nude Nubians nibbling gnash
knuckles and nicotine, I am not a fig plucker nor a fig plucker’s son, but I
will pluck the figs until the fig plucker comes.
Each
time you mess up, you take a drink. If you need something repeated, you take a
drink. It could get a bunch of teenagers drunk off Boone’s Farm rather quickly
as I recall. My cousin, who was having a tough time with the game once, finally
made it to the end. She was so proud of herself that when it came to the last
sentence she stood up and yelled the final line: “I am not a pig fucker, or a
pig fucker’s son, but I will fuck the pig until the pig fucking comes!”
I
remember countless parties and get-togethers in which me and the rest of the
drama club nerds all sat around playing drinking games. I think back on those
parties and say, “Those were good times.”
Then
I snap out of it and think, “What the hell was I doing?” It’s no wonder I wasn’t
getting any. Do you think the popular kids and football players were playing
drinking games? No, they were out getting laid, not moderating a game of “A
brown hen, a couple of duck” for a bunch of theatre wannabes.
Man, I was lame.
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