A Special Message from Optimus Prime

...and a Happy New Year!

The Twelve Months

Over the past couple years, I've noticed some of the holiday traditions I've enjoyed for years have slowly disappeared. The thought was a little sad at first, but as nothing lasts forever, I realized it meant the opportunity to create new traditions.

Last year, one of these adoptions included sending out holiday cards. This year, I decided to continue the tradition, but I couldn't decide on what the illustration would look  like. Many options developed, including a few displayed below:

I was not satisfied with any of these options. I started thinking about what I could do in 2012 that would be better, more iconic, than just another winter holiday themed image. "Important" numbers started flowing through my mind: 2012, 12/12/12, 12/21/2012. The choice was obvious.

The Twelve Days of Christmas.

Part of my interest in The Twelve Days of Christmas involved an incident over Thanksgiving, where I mistakenly claimed that one of the gifts in the song included "lepers leaping." As I remember it, my brother was quick to point out that it was "lords-a-leaping," and that receiving a group of lepers would be quite a poor gift indeed. Through this incident, the realization was made evident: I could not name all 12 gifts. The lack of this knowledge freed my mind and allowed me to imagine new gifts that could be given, such as leaping lemurs (quite the improvement over lepers), Danny Partridge stuck in a tree, or...

What were the original 12 gifts?

The question was stuck in my head and needed to be solved. A quick internet search later lead to an unanticipated result: there were more than just 12 gifts to choose from.

Now, any practical contemplation on the song would infer that yes, there would be many different versions of the song. Even today we have variations of the melody, including The Twelve Gifts of Christmas or The Twelve Days of Yaksmas. Yet, I never would have imagined that there would be previous incarnations of the song that included much better gifts, such as ships that sail or bears that fight!

Of particular interest to me was an old French folk-song. 

The Twelve Months

In the book Chants populaires des Flamands de France: recueillis et publiés avec les mélodies originales, une traduction française et des notes, published in 1855, author Charles de Coussemaker writes about the song Le premier jour d’l’année, also known as Les Douze Mois or The Twelve Months.



In his description, he cites the song as being a traditional folk song derived from pre-Gaul druidic tradition.

The first verse...



...asks the question “What will my love give me on the first day of the year?” and answering with “one lone partridge that flies in the woods.”

The remaining verses...




...though slightly different than the gifts we typically associate with the Twelve Days of Christmas, follow the same format, asking what one’s love will bring, and answering with everything from the familiar turtle doves as well as a variety of other birds, to the strange, extravagant, and odd gifts of branches, windmills, and horned bulls.



De Coussemaker then follows up with a paragraph (seen above) describing how in it’s current state, the song has been extremely distorted. Despite that fact, he felt it important to publish in the collection out of respect for the country’s druidic heritage. He then concludes with a sentence about how the song has spawned several versions of the song where symbolic religious value is assigned to each hour of the twelve hour period.

In case any of you want to play and or sing this song for yourself, the musical notation is displayed below: