The Twelve Days of Christmas

When one thinks of the Twelve Days of Christmas, one usually thinks of the song that relates twelve days of gift-giving, starting with a partridge in a pear tree.  (Personally, I like the version sung by Straight, No Chaser.)  However, in most of the Western Churches, the twelve days of Christmas refer to the twelve days following Christmas, leading up to the beginning of Epiphany (January 6th).  Epiphany is traditionally  celebrated as the time when the Wise Men or Magi arrived bearing gifts for the baby Jesus.

This year, Beth, one of my TLT yahoo group friends, mentioned a fun idea where one's family plays the part of a secret Santa, dropping off small gifts on the porch of a friend's house each of twelve nights until the last night when the Santa Family reveals themselves.  Usually, it's done for the benefit of children; however, I thought this would be a marvelous idea for an elderly neighbor of ours who lives alone.  I got many ideas and poems from this website, but decided I needed to modify it a bit to fit our older friend.   I thought I'd share my ideas in case the reader would like to do something similar next year. :)

The very first thing I would suggest doing is creating a note to go with the first night's gift.  Elderly neighbors tend to freak out when tall 12-year old boys bundled up...and unrecognizable...for cold weather appear on their porch unexpectedly, just as the neighbor looks out her window!  (We set that straight in a hurry with a phone call from a mutual friend so the game wasn't given away right in the beginning.)

Here's the poem to be left on the first night: 

This glad Christmas season is so full of fun,
We're happy to share this with you, then run.
How grateful we are that you're playing our game,
You'll now find that Christmas won't be the same.

The song that we sing twelve days in a row
Won't get tiresome with treats from friends you know.
But to keep up the mystery and the fun,
You won't know who we are until we're all done!

Each night we'll bring something special for you,
And leave it on your doorstep - Don't catch us too soon!
So please do not watch for us; it'll spoil the fun,
We promise we'll reveal ourselves on the last nightly run!

Next, I printed out some blank tags so I could write my own notes on them as follows.  I bought some Christmas gift bags that look like lunch bags, put the gift inside, folded the top over and punched a hole in it through which I could thread a piece of ribbon to attach the tag with my note.  Usually, we left the parcels late enough that they were found in the morning.  Following are the notes I left.

On the FIRST day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, a partridge in a pear tree...
Sorry, but I couldn't find a partridge so I'm giving you some pears from the tree.    (Leave a can of pears in the bag with the note attached.)

On the SECOND day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, two turtle doves...
Unfortunately, I don't have any turtle doves.  Will a Dove candy bar and some Turtle candy do?  (Tie the Dove candy bar and two Turtle candies together with a ribbon and leave it with the note.)

On the THIRD day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, three French hens...
The French hens were not available, so we're leaving you French fries, courtesy of the French hens.   (Leave a small bag of frozen French fries with the note.)

On the FOURTH day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, four calling birds...
More birds!  How about some thistle and suet so you can call those birds to your house.   (I found  ready-to-hang thistle in a bag and some suet to leave with the note.)

On the FIFTH day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, five golden rings...
Sorry, we can't afford golden rings, but how about some golden pineapple rings?   (Leave a can of pineapple rings with the note.)

On the SIXTH day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, six geese a laying...
You really don't want messy geese all over your yard.  Instead, here are six lovely blue eggs they left behind.  (We have an Araucana hen who lays blue eggs.  You can be creative with this one. Don't forget the note.  By the way, we did a 'ring and run' with this one.  Frozen eggs aren't much good.)

On the SEVENTH day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, seven swans a swimming... The swans have all flown south for the winter, but a Loon swimming on your tree seemed appropriate from crazy friends.  (I found a lovely Loon ornament in our local Maine Made store, which I left with the note.)

On the EIGHTH day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, eight maids a milking...
I didn't think you really wanted a cow...or a goat... but how about some garlic herbed cheese and crackers?  (We have goats, so I make goat cheese.  We left that with a nice box of crackers and the note.  You can certainly find a nice cheese in the grocery store.)

On the NINTH day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, nine ladies dancing...
Here are some socks the ladies would have loved to have for their cold, tired feet.   (My daughter whipped up a wonderful pair of wool socks, which we left with the note.)

On the TENTH day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, ten lords a leaping...

That's a lot of guys leaping around your house.  Perhaps you would prefer to watch the leaping flame of a Christmas candle instead.  (I found a lovely small Christmasy tea light candle surrounded by berries at Pier 1 to put in with the note.)

On the ELEVENTH day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, eleven pipers piping...

How about eleven pipes of chocolate instead of all that noise?  (I left a can of Pirouline cookies with the note.  I considered a Christmas cd, but didn't know if she had a cd player, so I nixed that.)

On the TWELFTH day of Christmas, your crazy friends gave to you, twelve drummers drumming... No drummers, we promise. :)  We thought you'd like a special treat to enjoy the quiet of this night.  "For unto us, a child is born..."   (I found a lovely Christmas mug and some hot chocolate which we delivered with the note.)

Realizing that the twelve days of Christmas traditionally are counted starting on Christmas evening, we chose, instead, to start this twelve days before Christmas, culminating on Christmas eve.  This way, we could take the last gift with us when we went Christmas caroling on Christmas Eve, and thus reveal ourselves to our neighbor and wish her a very Merry Christmas.

I have heard from another neighbor that this friend enjoyed the secret Santa immensely, and looked forward to it each day.  I know we were just as blessed in sharing the joy with her as she was in receiving it.

We plan to find another victim to bless next year.  It was just too much fun.

Christmas

I think that this was probably one of the most blessed Christmases we've had in a long time.  TBear and I decided to play Secret Santa to a lovely elderly neighbor of ours, "J."   She has lived alone since her husband passed away a few years ago, and her children seem to live far away.  I think she is often lonely too.  We are surrounded by other terrific neighbors, with one in particular who makes a point of visiting "J" frequently.  At any rate, for the 12 days leading up to Christmas eve, we left little packages and notes on her porch.  (I will share more about the 12 Days in another post.)  Then on Christmas eve, other fabulous friends who live a few miles down the road from us, joined our family to go caroling at "J's" house and finally reveal who has been leaving parcels for her.  It was crisp and clear and cold, and the stars twinkled.  We had a wonderful time!

After caroling, we gathered up TBear's violin and piled into our car to head down to our Caroling Friends' house on the lake for a Christmas eve service.  After the service, we gathered around a bonfire by the lake, watched the stars twinkle, and sang more Christmas carols.  It was a perfect ending to a beautiful evening.  Riss and GrandSunny met us at home shortly after we returned.  We enjoyed a cup of cheer and some hors d'oeuvres.  The children hung their stockings by the chimney with care and went to bed to dream of... I don't know what... a whiter Christmas, perhaps?

On Christmas morning, I woke up at 5:30am.  Amazingly, I was the only one awake then.  I spent the next hour listening to what I thought was Riss's phone alarm going off every few minutes.  (Which was strange; I couldn't understand why she would set her alarm since she didn't have to be anywhere but here.)  The smell of the coffee brewing finally drove me to the kitchen, which is when I discovered the musical alarm was actually coming from OUR room, not Riss's!   I discovered TBear had set the alarm on the to-be-used-for-emergency-only cell phone that was buried in the bottom drawer of my night table.  He hadn't shut the power off when he was done playing with the settings.

TBear's thoughtful Christmas gift to his dad was to roll out of bed early to do the barn chores by himself, so Dad could enjoy his coffee in the quiet of Christmas morning.  Sunny didn't even wake up until TBear was back in from doing chores!

Finally, coffee or tea in hand, we gathered in our living room by the fire, and Christmas tree, to read the last chapter of "Bartholomew's Passage," an advent story we started just after Thanksgiving.  At last, we opened stockings and gifts.  What a wonderful time of sharing we had.   I was so happy to just sit and be with this family I love so much!  Especially since Riss works late hours and I don't get to see her much, and Nutmeg will soon be leaving to embark on a new journey to Oklahoma.  She has accepted a teaching job there, so it will be some time before we get to see her again.

My narration wouldn't feel complete without some updated pictures of our family, so I will share those now.   This is the wonderful Chore Boy Who Gave His Dad A Break On Christmas Morning, TBear, just in from doing the milking.

 
About a week before Christmas, Riss's boyfriend Jacob got a pair of absolutely darling hound puppies to help him hunting.  Their names are Savage and Zoe...guess who named which puppy?

Nutmeg knit a beautiful blue sweater for Sunny for Christmas.

Here is Nutmeg the talented Sock and Sweater Knitter, enjoying the journal her grandmother sent back to us this Christmas.  We got the idea for this last year here.

Nutmeg taught me to knit this summer.  Grandmas knit, right?  I wanted to make socks and mittens for grandchildren, so in August I took lessons from Nutmeg.  After tinking  (that would be knitting backwards, or un-knitting) and starting a mitten over again six times, I finally got the hang of it.  I was so delighted with the outcome that I ventured to sign up for a class at my local yarn shop to make a sweater.  (MyJane told me I skipped some steps in the learning process there, but scarves are boring. :)

This is the Icelandic sweater I made the Farmer for Christmas.  (And, hallelujah, it fit!)

 

The day after Christmas, we gave sled rides to some friends with family up from Virginia.  Pat and Scooby are still very good boys, and they love their jingle bells.  (I do too!)

Unfortunately, we're expecting rain tomorrow, which will quite possibly wash away all our snow.  This is truly weird weather for Maine this year, but January is here soon.  Hopefully, the weather will return to its normal snowiness.  (Yes, that's a word...now. :)

Horse-Drawn Snow Roller

At the turn of the 20th century, when farmers needed to go somewhere, they generally still traveled by horse-drawn wagon.  When it snowed, well, they'd just hunker down for a few days waiting for the roads to be cleared.  This didn't phase them in the least; after all, they had all the food, firewood, and fodder stored up that they needed for the winter.   However, there were times that it was necessary to get to town to do business, so a team of oxen or draft horses would be hitched up to a huge snow roller to pack the snow down on the road from one farm to the next, and on into town to make it easier to travel by sleigh.  Interestingly, snow rollers seemed to have been peculiar to New England and New York.
 
Thanks to Henry Ford and his mass-produced Model-T (starting around 1908), cars eventually became more numerous than horse-drawn wagons, roads were paved, and snow plows took over the job of making travel easier by scraping the snow off the roads.

We find much to learn from history though.  Recently, MacGyver, who reads and researches stuff like this all the time, reinvented a snow roller to be pulled behind one of our horses.  Taking an old cable spool, he nailed boards around the perimeter, did a little welding, set the whole thing on a frame with a seat, and voila!  (I make it sound so easy, don't I? :)  It's not nearly as big as the ones drawn by a team of oxen, but it suited the purpose of packing a trail through the woods, hopefully making it easier for our horses to pull a sled.  (The weather is supposed to deteriorate into slop, so it may be a few days before we can go for a sled ride.)

Here is the reinvented snow roller.  Whit is going to make a test run around the yard.  (That turned out to be a good plan. :)

 

We discuss a few modifications that need to be made.

 

Now that we've seen that the roller will work, we're ready to go for the test run through the woods.  Having the two of us riding on it made it less tender, and easier to balance.

  

 It really did work very well.  One pass down the path and one back made it wide enough for the two horses to pull the sled.

Now, I would just like a little more snow.

O Christmas Tree

This entry is for my family, who is always amused by our Christmas tree.  For the past five years, Whit has refused to purchase a Christmas tree from a tree farm.  After all, we have a lot of trees in our woods to choose from, and many of them are actually balsam firs...the kind you find on Christmas tree lots.  Of course, they haven't been trimmed, and they're about 25 feet tall, but those are minor details.  I keep ragging on my Botanist and the Farmer to plant a few small ones in our field to be pruned and groomed for our living room, but that hasn't happened yet.

For the past few years we've had some good snow.  This year has been rather disappointing, although we did get enough for a white Christmas.  Usually we harness ol' Scooby to the sled and have him drag the tree home.  It's always quite a process to wade through the deep snow, cut the tree and get it home.  Not this year though.  We had barely six inches of snow, and I wasn't able to be here.  So the Farmer, the Botanist, and the Boy all went to the woods to cut the aforementioned tannenbaum and drag it home, sans Scooby. 

When I arrived home, the tree was standing in its place of honor, with the lights already rigged up on it by the Botanist.  All I had to do was help decorate.  It was a lot better than getting run over by the sled with the tree on it again this year.  :) 

Without further ado, here is the picture of our Christmas tree this year (minus the bottom 19 feet or so.)  I always have to laugh.  Every year someone stands back and says, "That's the best tree we've had yet."  I'm sure it is.  We're getting good at that pruning thing.