The real “Twelve Days of Christmas”

From my site:

Silly me.

For the longest time, I thought "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was a song from the Elizabethan era whose seemingly secular symbols were used by persecuted English Catholics to teach their children the Faith.

Boy, was I wrong. According to Sister Carol Gaeke, O.P., I wasn't nearly perceptive enough. Thankfully, she sets the record straight in a December 15 editorial in Cincinnati's Catholic Telegraph.

For instance, I had always thought that the "partridge in a pear tree" was Christ. Had I looked deeper, I would have discovered a "gold mine" beneath the pear tree "signifying the precious minerals of our planet."

In my benighted understanding of things, the "eight maids a'milking" represented the beatitudes. It's not as simple as that. As it turns out, the cows being milked are "symbols of our earth that needs to be tended and nurtured, not used up and destroyed by greed."

What's more, had I looked "beyond the surface gaiety" of these symbols I would have discovered they form a puzzle, along the border of which are "global warfare, nuclear weapons, domestic violence, sexual, class and racial violence."

Better late than never. My new deeper understanding, coupled with such incredibly rich imagery, comes just in time to teach my children the Faith this Christmas.