On the seventh day of Christmas...

This is the last day of the "my true love gave to me [insert bird type and quantity here]" part of The Twelve Days of Christmas. With the exception of a brief excursion for a handful of gold rings, every gift has been one of birds: partridges, doves, hens, songbirds, geese, and today, swans. Starting with tomorrow's verse, the song moves into the realm of human occupations and activities: milking, leaping, dancing, piping and drumming.

Raised as I was on Fred Waring's Christmas recordings, I learned the ninth verse as "nine ladies waiting", which I always found unsatisfactory. The lords get to leap. and the ladies have to wait? Is that what it's going to be like to be a grownup? I have since learned that the more common wording of the verse has those ladies dancing, and though it's a little harder to sing, I am better-pleased with that.

Some folks say that the whole song is a coded catechism, but there is disagreement on that point, and to me it feels like an explanation too encased in Christian "seriosity" and sacred/secular dualism. If God created everything, and thought it good, very good indeed, then why can't a swan simply be a swan? Isn't that a glory enough?