TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

 

I have two favorite Christmas carols; the haunting Carol of the Bells, composed in 1904 by Ukrainian Mykola Leontovych, and the seemingly nonsensical Twelve Days of Christmas, which is old enough that we have no idea who composed it. In fact, the Twelve Days of Christmas might even predate Christianity in France, where the song originated. 

And that makes this English carol more interesting - to me, anyway – because it speaks to the evolution of the holiday. Remember, it wasn't until 137 years after the death of Jesus, give or take a couple of years, that the Bishop of Rome ordered a “Christesmaesse” - Christ's Mass -  to celebrate Jesus' birth on the 25th of December - the winter solstice, after which the hours of daylight get 60 seconds longer each day.   

You see, the twelve disciples did not celebrate Christmas, partly because they were Jewish, but mostly because until fairly recently anything from 60 to 80% of infants died within hours of their birth.

Nobody celebrated their birth day, not even Pope Julius I (above), who around 345 A.D. picked December 25^th as Jesus' birth day.  For all humans, even for the Messiah, life did not officially begin until their epiphany, (meaning the public display of the new child), which was not done until you were pretty sure the child was going to live at least for a year or so. And Jesus' epiphany is celebrated in the Catholic church 12 days after Christmas. Or, maybe Jesus was actually born on 6 December - 12 days before 25 December - which is Saint Nicholas's day.... If you think about it too much, this holiday can become very confusing.  So let's stick to the song.

This English Christmas Carol began as a  midwinter festival “memories and forfeits game”, a sort of musical chairs in a world without very many chairs. 

We know the game began in France because the Red-legged (or French) partridge (above), widespread in medieval Europe, commonly perches in trees, unlike the the English (or grey) partridges which, while common today, were not introduced to England until the 18^th century, and they prefer nesting on ledges or cliffs. And in all three medieval French versions of the song that we know of, and all surviving English versions, “a partridge in a pear tree” is the first and final present always received by the lead singer. So it all started in France with Red-legged partridges.

In the game the leader sings a verse, and each participant repeats what they have just heard, and everybody then takes a drink of wine or mead. Then the leader sings another verse, adding an item, the players repeat, and then everybody drinks again. The rounds we have inherited begin “On the first day of Christmas, my true love gives to me, a partridge in a pear tree.  On second day of Christmas, my true love gives to me, two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree.”

The game continues (with variations) to three French Hens, four colly birds, five gold rings, six geese a-laying, seven swans a-swimming, eight maids a-milking, nine ladies dancing, ten lords a-leaping, eleven pipers pipping, and twelve drummers drumming. A player who forgets an item is eliminated and forced to offer a kiss to the leader, or eat a less than appealing food item. The game would continue until all 12 verses were done, or all the players but one had been eliminated because they were too drunk to remember their own names, let alone how many maids were milking. Sound familiar?  How many bottles of beer do you have on your wall?

And yes, the line is “four colly birds”, as in a colliery, meaning a coal pit or a mine. The birds referred to were as black as coal – the common European black bird. When this song was translated into English, crows and ravens were large enough to only be referred to as fowl.

But the 4 ½ ounce Turdus merula (the black thrush) (above), was small enough to be called a bird . In the winter black birds were easy to attract with seed and easy to catch with a net, and they were a common part of the diet. Peasants sang about “four and twenty black birds baked in a pie”, and they meant these cute little guys. It is a reminder that there are huge chunks of our culture based on now forgotten starvation times repeatedly suffered in each life time. And “break fasts,” like the midwinter festival, were fond memories, which Christianity adopted and adapted to.

In fact, birds play a major role in this song, as if the leader was scanning the banquet table for the next noun to use in the next verse. The partridge is followed by turtle doves, French hens, the Colly birds, geese and swans. The five gold rings seem out of place unless they refer to the ring-necked pheasant, the male of which (above) has a golden brown plumage and a white ring around his neck. There would have been such a bird on any well stocked pheasants midwinter festival table, along with all that other bird protein

There would also have been cheese (made from milk), and about the room, men and women dancing - but not in pairs, that would not become common until the 10^th century. And of course there would be musicians accompanying the song-game with the world's oldest instruments, a flute (or a pipe) and a drum. Music was as vital a part of pagan religious and social celebrations, as they are of Christian services.

And that brings up the recent myth that this game was used to preserve Catholicism in a hostile Protestant England. That might be true, except there is not even of hint of that story until 1979. However, the success of this myth across the Internet since then, does offer an insight into the methodology Christianity used to snatch Christmas from the happy pagans getting drunk at their winter solstice break fast. 

I am not suggesting a conspiracy, but rather a well meaning application of religiously influenced logic. That is also probably how Mithra over came Apollo, and how Jupiter conquered Zeus. It would be wise for all born again Christian evangelicals to remember that religious practices never really die, they just become adopted and adapted.  That has nothing to do with the validity of any belief. It just means humans have always wanted to believe.

The same can be said about a certain odd mathematical aspect of the carol. If you add up all the gifts – 1 partridge, 2 turtle doves and 1 partridge, 3 French hens, 2 turtle doves and 1 partridge, etc., etc. – they add up to 364 gifts in total. It seems there ought to be some connection between the gifts and the length of the year. 

The only problem is a year is 365 ¼ days long, not 364, and that time length has been well known since, well, since forever. And while it seems the number of gifts, like some sort of Christmas carol kabbalah, ought to mean something, it really doesn't. And that seems to me to be the difference between religion and science. In religion the possibility of meaning is the meaning, while in science the possibility is theory and subject to testing. 

Religion gave us Michelangelo's "David". Science gave us a modern infant mortality rate in industrial nations of less then 1% and thus, birthdays.

Which brings us to the Christmas Price Index, created in 1984 by the chief economist for PNC Financial Services Group, of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, as “a humorous commodity price index to measure the changing cost of goods over time” using the price of the gifts in The Twelve Days of Christmas as a measure. 

Each year in late November, PNC analysts consult with the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Garden and the National Aviary in Philadelphia to price most of the birds in the song. However, for some reason, rather than a European black bird, PNC uses the price of a canary at Petco.

Gordon Jewelers, a division of Zale Corporation out of Irving, Texas, prices five gold rings for the Index, even tho, as I said earlier, the gift probably refereed to was the ring-necked pheasants. The maids-a-milking are assumed to be earning federal minimum wage. 

And the Philadelphia Dance Company and their Ballet Company provide the cost of leaping and dancing ladies and lords. The Pennsylvania Musicians Union provides the cost of the drummers and pipers. 

And the fruit tree has by tradition priced by Waterloo Gardens, an upscale Philadelphia plant nursery catering to the local top 1% of green thumbs.

In 2024, thanks to inflation the total price jumped to $49,263.47, a one year increase of 5.4%! The partridge and the pair tree together cost $370.18 - up 16% over last year.  The price of the turtle doves remained steady at $750.00.  The trio of French Hens cost  $364.50,  an increase of 5%.  

The 4 Colling birds (actually Petco canaries) also remained steady for the second year in a row at $599.96.  The five gold rings also remained stable, at $1,245.00.   The price for 6 geese a-laying - at  $900.00 - was up 15.4%, while  the 7 swans - at $13,125.00 - was unchanged. The 8 maids a milking -  at just  $58.00  -  has remained flat since 2009 - which says something very depressing about women and the minimum wage. 

The price of 9 ladies dancing was up 15.8% at $37,557.47,  ten lords a leaping cost $15,579.65 , an increase of 7.2%.  The musicians for wind instruments and the percussionists were both up 15.8% at $3,714.96 and $4,016.85.  

PNC admits they use the index to “engage clients”, which means they are trying to entertain bankers, a profession not known for their humor or their humility. But, PNC also admits this annual nonsense economic measure has become “one of PNC’s most popular and anticipated economic reports.” I suspect that is in large part because it is “filler” used by media types to add a Christmas hint to their newscasts.  

However, there may be hidden a more significant meaning, if  you care to look.  In June of 2012, after 70 years in business, the “nationally renowned Waterloo Gardens” went bankrupt. It seems after the "Great Recession",  even the 1% were tightening their belts, which means their gardeners were beginning to starve. And that was in 2012, before the minimum wage was stuck for another 10 years.

In any case, please have a Merry, merry, happy Capitalist Christmas. If you can afford it this year.

  - 30 -

The Personality of a Politician

 

I don't think you have to be crazy to be a politician, but a little screwball logic can solidify your base. On the other hand you don't want voters suspecting you might be completely loony. And navigating a path between those two alternatives can be tricky at times.

For example, in the 1980's a 5'1” tall combative obsessive/compulsive fire cracker named Ruthann Aron (above) dreamed big dreams.  Always big. She earned advanced degrees in both microbiology from Cornel and a law degree.  A college boyfriend remembered, "If she was angry, you knew it... There was nothing left to the imagination."  

Ruthann was even admitted to practice before the U.S. Supreme Court - although she never did. Instead she took a quicker route to wealth, earning millions by developing shopping centers. She didn't make a lot of friends, of course. Just a lot of money.

Her urologist husband Barry (above), the father of her two children,  admitted at the time, “She gets in people’s faces in a very straightforward way and doesn’t tap dance too much.”  

But Ruthann's story really begins in the “Washington, D.C.” adjacent enclave of Montgomery county, Maryland (above), one of the richest and best educated counties in America. Everybody here, it seems came from some place else – the county was even named for a Revolutionary War hero who never set foot in the state. This is one of those big ponds where little fish either get eaten or grow big  And in 1994 it had not voted for a Republican Presidential candidate since Ronald Reagan retired. 

As Barry Rascovar noted for the Washington Post in mid-August of 1994, “...the last time there was a truly contested GOP Senate primary was in the early 1960s.”  It was here that our diminutive mother of two faced her first public test when, after just two years on the County Planning Board, Ruthann Aron decided to run for the United States Senate. She was a pro-choice member of the John Birch Society, who boasted, "I'm not a career politician. I'm a businesswoman."

It was a clever move. The dysfunctional Maryland G.O.P had little hope of beating the popular Democrat, Paul Sarbanes (above) who had held the Senate seat since 1976 and seemed a shoe-in for re-election. Even if she lost the primary, Ruthann could still lay a foundation for a future in politics.

The only drawback was that there were seven candidates vying for the Republican nomination, so Ruthann decided to stand out, by attacking her best known fellow Republican opponent, the  multimillionaire candy heir, ex-Senator from Tennessee, and ex-GOP Chairman, the handsome Bill Brock III.

Ruthann spent nearly a quarter of a million of her own dollars buying radio ads, in which two “hillbillies” laughed about the way Maryland voters were being fooled by the “tax-raising, carpetbagging, career politician”, Senator Brock (above).   The ex-Senator chose to not even mention Ruthann in his few radio ads. No since giving the little lady free publicity. 

Then, a poll released on Labor Day weekend found Brock leading, as expected, but with just 23% of the vote. And in second place and well within the margin of error for a tie was Ruthann, at 20%.

With just two weeks to go before the primary, Brock decided he could no longer ignore the tiny upstart, and called an afternoon press conference for Thursday, 8 September, 1994, on the Rockville courthouse square (above). His stated intention was to attack his female opponent. That was sure to draw the media.

As the Baltimore Sun noted, “The minutes preceding yesterday's news conference had the feel of a mock thriller....About 2 p.m. the (Ruthann) Aron camp entered...About 10 minutes later, Mr. Brock arrived with his contingent of sign-wavers.” 

Neither Senator Block (above), nor his supporters had expected Ruthann to make an appearance. The Washington Post observed, “As reporters and photographers soaked up the awkward silence, the two camps stared mutely, and the whirring of (film) cameras was all that was heard.”

With the "little lady" just a few feet away, Senator Block decided to tone down his attacks, but retired Congresswoman Marjorie Holt (above), fired the shot across Ruthann's bow, describing, “...the aura of fraud and breach of contract that constantly surrounds the other candidate.”  After that,  the press conference devolved into two competing impromptu verbal slug fests,  during which Brock built on Holt's charge. According to the Post, Brock said, “She has been convicted by a jury of fraud, more than once," 

The reporters were having a ball,  bouncing "between the two candidates like pin balls.” Brock backed up the theatrical press conference with $220,000 in new radio ads, 800 ads in just 5 days, claiming that Ruthann had been convicted of fraud “more than once”, and had to pay “hundreds of thousands of dollars in fines”. Said his narrator in the ad, "Before Ruthann Aron starts attacking anybody, maybe she ought to look in the mirror.”

On Tuesday, 13 September, Ruthann lost the primary by 50,000 votes. Even worse, a poll released just before the election showed that rather than laying a foundation for her future, her campaign style had raised her negatives within the Republican Party to 16%.  Her reputation was not even helped when Block was easily beaten by the Democrat Sarbanes in the November general election. So, finding herself in a hole, Ruthann decided to keep digging.  She sued Brock for defamation of character. No politician had ever done that before.  I wonder why?

It took over a year for what the Baltimore Sun called Ruthann's “frivolous lawsuit” to work its way to trial, which it did in early 1996. “Jurors have been schooled”, wrote the Sun, “in subliminal suggestion...the role of Russian composer Peter Ilich Tchaikovsky in an effective campaign commercial....harked to the tonal difference between a major chord and a slamming jail door, listened again and again to the definition of "Ronald Reagan's 11th Commandment" (Thou shalt not speak ill of a fellow Republican) and been told that staff members look at members of Congress the way undertakers look at corpses.”

Chief witness for Brock was Arthur G. Kahn (above), a lawyer in a 1984 suit against Ruthann's real estate company, Research Incorporated. And he compared Ruthann to an octopus. When it was attacked, he said, "... it emits a dark fluid, a black fluid,  and it escapes in the darkness and muddies the waters." More specifically, Kahn testified that Ruthann had betrayed investors in one of her shopping malls. 

The mall had never been built, because Ruthann sold the rights to the project to a third party for $200,000. And kept that money. The jury decided she  had violated her agreement with the investors and awarded them $175,000, which Ruthann paid only after Arthur Kahn agreed to request the judge wipe the verdict from the record.  Which the judge had done.  

It had been a civil suit. Ruthann had lost it, but there had been no conviction, and the civil verdict had been wiped away, so technically what Senator Brock had said at the press conference had been a lie. But ...

....this new jury decided that was splitting hairs, and, besides, my bet is they just did not like Ruthann very much. Who did? Her own father, who had died during her campaign,  had written Ruthann out of his will. "I specifically and unequivocably leave absolutely nothing for my daughter...and direct my executor to reject any claim that she may make..."

The new jury found for Brock. Ruthann's claims were denied. That made two defeats in one election. Now she was really, double-dog-done in politics And that should have been the end of Ruthann's political dreams,  unless she had thrown herself into charity work or earned a Nobel Peace Prize or saved a sinking sack of kittens. Instead she switched to the Democratic Party and raised the curtain on Ruthann, act two. 

On Saturday, 7 June, 1997, Ruthann Aron was arrested for hiring a hit man to murder her old nemesis,  Arthur Kahn. And, as an afterthought, her own husband Doctor Barry Aron, who had finally asked for a divorce. 

The little lady had walked into the lobby of a Marriott Hotel, disguised in a trench coat, a wig, a floppy hat,  dark glasses and carrying the $500 down payment  to pay for a double murder. She must have looked like a munchkin spy. On tape she spelled out the names of her intended victims. "B like in boy, A-R-R-Y", she was heard saying.  The hitman/cop asked if Ruthann wanted her husband's death to look like a suicide.  Ruthann replied, "If it would pass muster".  It was an open and shut case. Mostly shut.

Ruthann insisted at both of her trials (the first jury hung, 11-1 for conviction) that she was crazy. Nine doctors argued she had a borderline personality disorder, had suffered a brain injury as a child, had 

been molested by her father.  But explaining her vindictive personality did  not justify her maniacal approach to politics and interpersonal relationships.  Let's just say she was nuts and let it go at that.

All 12 members of the second jury found Ruthann guilty of all counts. At her sentencing Ruthann's lawyer pointed out what her brief career in politics had cost the little lady. "She's lost her credibility, her reputation, her family as she knew it, her dignity, her lifestyle, her husband, almost everything she had”, he said.  She still got three years in jail,  with a suspended sentence of ten more years hanging over her head. Barry the urologist not only filed for divorce, he sued Ruthann for $7.5 million. So she counter-sued him for $24 million. Some people never learn. 

After she got out of jail in 2001, Ruth Ann moved to Florida, and changed her last name to Green.  And then she wrote her autobiography, in which she blamed everything on Barry. She called her self-published book, “Corrupted Justice: A Killer Husband,”   The jury didn't buy it, why should anybody else? 

And that is the end of the sad story of Ruthann  Aron-Green, She is still worth between $1 and $5 million. Her son died in the World Trade Center attack on 9/11.  Her daughter no longer speaks to her. The lesson from our little tale of this little lady is that if you sleep with a politician, you may or may not find love, but you will defiantly get screwed. Those people are nuts.

- 30-