Tuesday, January 3, 2012

Signing off for Christmas 2011...



Well, Christmas is all done and dusted and yes, I didn't have time to finished off my 12 days of Christmas due to family commitments, and many other unexpected demands, 'nuff said! 
My Virgo instincts are nagging at me to finish everything off properly, so here goes with the last 2 bits of the song....



Eleven Pipers Piping

 According to one theory about the origins of The Twelve Days of Christmas song, the pipers are Jesus' 11 faithful disciples.  Between 1558 and 1829 Catholicism was an underground religion, and any person caught with anything in writing that betrayed their adherence to the faith risked imprisonment or death - this song is believed to have originated as a catechism to help Catholics learn the tenets of their faith in secret.

12 Drummers Drumming

Well I don't know about 12, but in our family we have our own not-so-little (over 6-foot) drummer boy.  Here is Andrew in action and today being Christmas Eve he is coming home for our traditional Christmas morning breakfast ritual, then the ritual frantic tearing of the presents open before dashing off in our 4 wheel drive sleigh towards Melbourne and the rellies for Christmas lunch.





Thanks for joining me here at the Christmas Countdown blog, it's been a lot of fun and I'll try to be back next year, bigger and better, and more experienced in blog-dom!




And Santa Teddy says goodbye too.


Wednesday, December 21, 2011

Nine ladies dancing, Ten lords a-leaping




3 days to go..




Nine Ladies Dancing


And on another note, there exists a very whimsical stone circle high on Stanton Moore in the Derbyshire peaks, call the Nine Ladies Stone Circle.  It's a bit like the The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe in that legend has it that these "ladies" were turned into stone for making music and dancing on the Sabbath (how naughty of them!)  There are actuall ten stones; nine uprights lie within a small circular earth bank, with a tenth - the King Stone and reputedly the fiddler - lying prone on the bank.  It is one of a series of ancient monuments built 3,000-4,000 years ago, scattered across Stanton Moor.  At certain times of the year when the moon is full, the stones are said to move around in a ritual dance to the fiddler's haunting melody.




Ten Lords a-Leaping


"Leaping" might be too strong a word for it, but if you happen to find yourself in Flamborough on the North Yorkshire coast on Boxing Day (what are the odds?) you'll see a team of local men hopping and skipping around the town wielding wooden swords.  In the annual Longsword Dance, men dressed in traditional fishermen's "ganseys" (jerseys) white "ducks" (trousers) and flat caps tour the streets to tunes such as "Old Johnnie Walker".  This traditional goes back hundreds of years, and now is held to raise money for the local school.

 


http://www.flamboroughheadsac.org.uk/storyboards/history/iframe.php?StoryID=18



And S-T?






  
Santa Teddy has a joke for you:
  • Good King Wenceslas phoned Domino’s for a pizza.
    The salesgirl asked him:-
    ‘Do you want your usual?  Deep pan, crisp and even?’


  • Monday, December 19, 2011

    8 Maids a Milking



       5 days to go





    8 maids a milking
    Love these 8 little maids - thanks to Anne Geddes for her inspirational photos


    -   a bit of trivia

    "As smooth as a milk maid's skin"
    The expression "as smooth as a milk maid's skin" came about as a result of milk maid’s exposure to cowpox, which causes no serious symptoms, but does convey a partial immunity to the disfiguring (and often fatal) disease smallpox. Thus, milkmaids lacked the "pockmarked" complexion common to smallpox survivors. This observation led to the development of the first vaccine. By the early 19th century, more than 100,000 persons in Great Britain had been vaccinated against smallpox. (fascinating, thanks Wikipedia)


    Christmas Carols
    ...with an Australian theme, no less.
    Thanks to Jaybees for the words....

    On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
    A kookaburra in a gum tree

    On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me
    Two cockatoos, and a kookaburra in a gum tree   

    Three parakeets.........
    Four great galahs.......
    Five opals black......
    Six 'roos a-jumping........
    Seven emus running.......
    Eight koalas clinging.........
    Nine wombats waddling........
    Ten dingoes dashing.......
    Eleven snakes a-sliding.......
    Twelve goannas going.......


    ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

    And to the tune of Jingle Bells
    1. Dashing through the bush in a rusty Holden ute,
    Kicking up the dust, Esky in the boot,
    Kelpie by my side, singing Christmas songs,
    It's summer time and I am in my singlet, shorts and thongs.

    chorus
    Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells jingle all the way,
    Christmas in Australia on a scorching summer's day,
    Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut,
    Oh what fun it is to ride in a dusty Holden ute.

    2. Engine's getting hot, we dodge the kangaroos,
    The swaggie climbs aboard, he is welcome too.
    All the family is there, sitting by the pool,
    Christmas day in the Aussie way, by the Bar-b-cue. Oh!

    Chorus

    3. Come the afternoon, grandpa has a doze,
    The kids and Uncle Bruce are swimming in their clothes,
    The time comes round to go, we take a family snap,
    And pack the car and all shoot through
    Before the washing up. Oh!


    -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
    And Santa Teddy?
    S-T got a bit messy helping with the Christmas cooking on the weekend and had to be hung up to dry!


    Sunday, December 18, 2011


    6 days to go.. 






    And it looks like it's going to be a warm Christmas Day in Melbourne according to the weather forecast - although this may change as the day gets closer.



    And yes, I'm aware I've missed out several verses of the 12 days of Christmas as I had the most busy and frantic weekend of partying and present-buying so noooo time to blog. I hope you'll forgive me condensing 3 days of missed blogging into one, here goes..


    5 Golden Rings
    So the five golden rings in this stanza refer to five ring-necked pheasants, a dish that was sure to be served at some of the king or queen's Twelfth Night feasts during the Twelve Days of Christmas celebrations.
    Unlike the four collie birds in the previous stanza who just had their name changed to a different, and non-existent, species of bird, the five rings in this stanza have, in singers' and illustrators' minds, changed from five ring-necked pheasants to five pieces of jewelry. While gold rings for one's fingers have been around since ancient times, the word ring, even today, has different meanings. Today we refer to the platform on which boxers fight and wrestlers perform as a ring, a criminal conspiracy as a ring, jewelry for fingers, toes, ears, noses and belly buttons are all referred to as rings.  Given the versatility of the word ring in today's language it is not unusual to discover that our sixteenth century ancestors used the shortened term ring to describe a ring-necked pheasant as well as jewellery for their fingers.
    6 Geese-a-Laying
    I have found a Christmas game where you can find the 6 geese and much more apparently.
    Please refer to the craft tab above and print the picture.
    7 Swans-a-Swimming
    According to some believers, the 7 swans-a-swimming represent the  seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, i.e. 1) prophecy, 2) ministry, 3) teaching, 4) exhortation, 5) giving, 6) leading, and
    7) compassion
    Something to reflect on?


    And S-T?  What has he been up to?

    Well, a bit of upside-down planking with all the appropriate safety measures in place of course.  He's a safety-first kind of guy.

    Thursday, December 15, 2011

    4 Calling Birds (or is it?)


    9 days to go...   ho ho ho






    On the fourth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me,
    Four calling (Colly) Birds


    The Four Calling Birds in this stanza is due to a mix up between the English language as spoken in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and the English spoken today. It could also be due to a mix up between English as spoken in England and English as spoken in England's former colonies, particularly the United States and Australia.

    It's Colly Birds, Not "Calling Birds"

    The verse, four calling birds, is actually a corruption of the English word colly or collie . So, we are referring to four colly birds or four collie bird s (the words to the song were probably written before the creation of the dictionary, so the spelling of old words tends to be flexible).
    What is a colly bird? It is a black bird. In England a coal mine is called a colliery and colly or collie is a derivation of this and means black like coal. For a long time in England, blackbirds have been referred to as both blackbirds (as in the nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence ) and colly birds as in The Twelve Days of Christmas .
    Even in Tudor England these birds went by two different names so it is not so unusual that there would be some confusion three centuries and a couple of continents later.
    While the name blackbird migrated beyond England, the name collie bird remained behind in England where, even there, it tended to diminish in use over the centuries. Today, many published versions of the song in the U.S. and Australia give the birds' name as calling birds rather than collie birds.
    As to why the person in the song would give his true love a gift of blackbirds, the answer is that this would have been another gift of food. Blackbirds were plentiful and were a common food.
    From the nursery rhyme Sing a Song of Sixpence we see them being served as a meat pie and this may have been the way they were commonly served. In times past in Great Britain, pies were a convenient way to serve and eat a meal with the meat, potatoes and any vegetables all cooked together in an easy to handle crust (forks not having been invented at that time, table utensils consisted of knives, spoons and one's fingers).






    What has Santa Teddy been up to?

    He has decided to branch out into performance art.  He calls this "Teddy under glass".

    I think S-T is a little bored waiting for Christmas to arrive.

    This was painted in the 16th Century -

    Adoration of the Shepherds c. 1500–10, by Giorgio da Castelfranco

    Signing off for today fellow Christmasophiles!  It's been a long week and I'm relishing my day off.