Seventh Day of Christmas

Today is the Seventh Day of Christmas.  It is also New Year’s Eve. I will be talking about New Year’s Eve on another post.  So here I’ll do the continuation of the song, just to continue the tradition.  After all, you wouldn’t want me to quit halfway through, would you?

I think it’s interesting that the first seven gifts all have to do with birds.  When you start on Christmas Day as the First Day of Christmas, that very neatly brings us to the end of the year, New Year’s Eve.  So all the gifts given in December are birds, and all the remaining gifts given in January are people, or the services of people.  That’s interesting.  I don’t know what it means–if it’s supposed to mean anything.  I wonder if whoever thought up the song in the first place did it that way on purpose.  We’ll never know.

So here it is:

On the Seventh Day of Christmas my true love gave to me
Seven swans a-swimming
(Six geese a-laying
Five golden rings**
Four calling birds*
Three French hens
Two turtledoves
And a partridge in a pear tree.)

* Note: Wikipedia says “calling birds” is a corruption of “colly birds” which are black birds.

** Wikipedia also assures me that golden rings does not refer to “jewelry but to ring-necked birds such as the ring-necked pheasant.”