Five Golden Rings!
Wait? How did we get to day 12 already? I thought we were on day 4 yesterday?
No, you’re not mistaken. We were on day 4 yesterday and now we’re done. Because the thing about “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is that nobody wants to hear all 12 verses. Have you ever been to a concert or carol sing-along where they start doing “The Twelve Days of Christmas?” Pretty much once you hit five golden rings, people start mumbling and asking around, “They’re not really going to do the whole 12 days are they? Seriously? Oh, Jesus.”
No, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is like 99 bottles of beer on the wall: once you hit 97 or 96 bottles, everyone returns to what they were doing before, usually drinking bottles 95 and 94. Even the inimitable Bob and Doug McKenzie had the good sense to cut things off at, like, verse 6 and who I am to try to outdo them and their five golden tukes? God, how I love that song. They never play it in these parts, even on the all-Christmas-music station. It must be because of the anti-Canadian bias that’s so palpable around here. Surely the DJ’s have sufficient air time to play it, considering that they play that Carpenter’s song, “Merry Christmas, Darling” on a loop with about ten other Christmas songs 24/7. That Carpenter’s song has a line in it that cracks me up every time I hear it: “The logs on the fire fill me with desire.” Maybe it’s just me and my dirty mind but singing about flaming phalluses with your brother….kind of weird. Karen Carpenter had a lot more issues than any of us ever realized.
But more to the point, the reason I must break off the Twelve Blogs of Christmas is because I need to stay off the naughty list by making amends with the Handicapped Newsmen’s League of Upstate New York, who did not take kindly to my characterization of them in a recent post. I also did not endear myself to the Italian-American Bakers Union, and I am being flamed like kids pajamas at the Consumer Reports lab for suggesting that Italian Christmas cookies are anything but fabulous. It’s a good thing I didn’t mention how much I hate panettone, which is always, always stale. I think they make it that way.
No, instead I’m choosing to concentrate on getting my New Year’s resolutions in order. So far my resolution list only includes one item: going metric. That’s right, I’m tired of waiting around for the good ole U S of A to get with it. I was told growing up that the reason we needed to learn the metric system was because by the time we were all adults, America would be using the metric system. Well, it never happened. Obviously. So starting in 2010 I am taking matters into my own hands and going metric. If you ask me what the temperature is, I’m going to give it to you in Celsius. If you ask me how far something is, I’m going to tell you the distance in kilometers, and if I refer to buying milk at the store, I’m going to translate it from gallons into liters. I’m going the whole nine yards – er, I mean, meters -- whatever that works out to be. In other words, I’m going to be an ass about it, which probably puts me right back where I started 2009.
Anyway, I hope to see you on the flip side of the holidays and I'll sign off now by wishing you the joyous light-filled warmth that only a Christmas tree on fire can bring. Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukah!
