QUARANTINE BLOG # 634

December 24, 2021

For Christmas Eve QB 634 gives you 12 drummers drumming, 11 pipers piping, 10 lords a-leaping, 9 ladies dancing, 8 maids a-milking, 7 swans a-swimming, 6 geese a-laying, FIVE      GOLDEN      RINGS, 4 calling birds, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves, and a partridge in a pear tree.

The first published version of “The Twelve Days of Christmas”  was in 1780.  In 1979, a Canadian hymnologist, Hugh D. McKellar, published an article, “How to Decode the Twelve Days of Christmas,” in which he suggested that “The Twelve Days of Christmas” lyrics were intended as a catechism song to help young English Catholics learn their faith, at a time, several hundred years earlier, when practicing Catholicism was against the law.  McKellar offered no evidence for his claim, and today almost no one accepts that as factual since none of the enumerated items would distinguish Catholics from Protestants, and so would hardly need to be secretly encoded.

Here is the traditional version by Pentatonic.  And a very different version of Alan Sherman's composing.

🎄  Another classic Christmas poem is “A Visit from St. Nicholas,” more commonly known as “The Night Before Christmas” and “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” – from its first line – is by Clement Clarke Moore, a seminary professor, in 1837.  It was the first poem that I memorized.  I was to recite it at the Christmas program for the Loch Lynn Evangelical United Brethren Church, but the day before the program I came down with something.  Not sure what it was, but I was very sick.  Uncle Stan Callis – he called it “the dry land gout, the belly belly vinges, and jerking at the naval” – came to our house the morning of the play and said if I would come and do the poem, he would give me 15 cents (a fortune to a 10 year old in 1957).  The link following is another recitation, this one by read by His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales, Tom Hardy, Ncuti Gatwa, Dame Maggie Smith, Dame Penelope Keith, Joanna Lumley, Daniel Craig, and Dame Judi Dench.  Here is their reading.

The poem has been called “arguably the best-known verses ever written by an American” and is largely responsible for some of the conceptions of Santa Claus from the mid-nineteenth century to today. 

🎄  Next up, the closing minutes of a TV Christmas classic, “How the Grinch Stole Christmas.”

🎄  QB Christmas Eve also gives you a dozen and a half comic strips, cartoons, and other smilies just for Christmas.

Some little people are not happy to see Santa

All that were ordered for 233 Woodland Drive are here

Unusual decoration: I "saw" Mamma kissing Santa Claus?

If you can't do the laundry on Christmas Eve, make decorations

🎄  By request, “O Holy Night,” by Il Divo.

🎄  Some more Christmas music:

Michael Bublé and Bing Crosby singing “White Christmas.”

“White Christmas” by the U.S. Navy Band and Chorus.

And just for fun, the U.S. Navy Band and Chorus singing “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer.”

🎄  Because it can, QB 634 gives you a Christmas poem, punned from the last song.

A Russian family was planning a picnic, and the lady of the house, Accu-Ludmilla, said that day would be a terrible day because the weather was threatening.  Her husband laughed at her because the skies were clear and had been so for days.  Accu-Ludmilla assured him it would rain because Rudolph, the local Communist weatherman prognosticated it, and she insisted, “Rudolph the Red knows rain, dear.”

🛐  And today’s close, “The True Meaning of Christmas,” as recited by Linus van Pelt.

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a good night.

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