12 Days of Christmas: Why so many birds?

[RoJoHen]

I was randomly thinking about the song "The 12 Days of Christmas," and it dawned on me...this person received a lot of fucking birds!

So what's the deal? Is there some historical significance to this? Was it traditional to give people birds for the holidays? I don't know a lot about partridges, but do they typically enjoy hanging out in pear trees? Do pear trees even have leaves or fruit on them in the middle of winter? What a shitty gift!

By the 4th day of Christmas, I'd tell my true love, "You have given me birds the last four days in a row! What's the deal? I hope tomorrow you're planning to get me some gold jewelry or something. I don't need any more fucking birds."

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Maybe you're planning on starting an aviary?

Your True Love is setting you up nicely: a partridge, turtle doves, hens, songbirds, geese, swans. It's a good collection if they're all well-groomed and lively (albeit not very exotic). The gold rings go around the birds' ankles for identification. You'll need more than five though.

The Lords-a-Leaping and Ladies-Dancing are the high-class customers sent your way, thanks to your True Love spreading the word, and will no doubt dig deep into their expansive wallets for you. So not only is she setting up the business, she's convincing rich neighbours to seek you out. The Maids-a-milking are your employees, seeking to wring money out of you in turn, for doing very little.

The Pipers-Piping are more birds, I assume.

And Drummers-Drumming references the "drumming up" of business.

She's got her head screwed on straight, your True Love has. Always planning for profit.

 

[RoJoHen]

And the pear tree?

 

[Balrog]

They're delicious.

 

[RoJoHen]

But why is the partridge in the pear tree?

 

[Tora Ziyal]

^Because when the song was written there weren't power lines available for birds to sit on.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I mentally rewrote the title of this thread to "12 Days of Christopher Walken."

Christmas just got a lot more awesome.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

But why is the partridge in the pear tree?

Perhaps, despite her business savvy, she doesn't know much about birds? Maybe she thought "the birds will look better if they're presented in mock-ups of their natural habitat. What is its natural habitat? Well...a tree, I guess. Here's a pear tree, I'll just stick the Partridge to a branch".

 

[RoJoHen]

But why is the partridge in the pear tree?

Perhaps, despite her business savvy, she doesn't know much about birds? Maybe she thought "the birds will look better if they're presented in mock-ups of their natural habitat. What is its natural habitat? Well...a tree, I guess. Here's a pear tree, I'll just stick the Partridge to a branch".

I'm getting the impression that my true love has not been paying close attention to my interests. I think she bought these birds for herself!

 

[Trekker4747]

Birds? The singer gets a hell of a lot of people for Christmas!

Twelve Drummers
Eleven Pipers
Ten Lords
Nine Ladies
Eight Maids


That 50 people she gets for Christmas!

Holy shit!

 

[Balrog]

How do you think she's going to feed them?

The birds!

 

[RoJoHen]

True Love: "I know how much you love birds!"
Me: "Uhhh...."

 

[Alidar Jarok]

In a serious, but still speculative answer, the birds were probably fairly expensive. They aren't all that exotic best I can tell, but they would be elegant. Perhaps not the Geese so much, they're just annoying.

But yeah, there are five categories of people and in sheer numbers, they clearly win.

Golden Rings stand alone, though (musically as well if you think about it).

 

[Pingfah]

The French version is about stuffing your face with increasingly large amounts of delicious food and booze. It has some large breasted women as well. Overall, it's a lot better.

 

[Zulu Romeo]

On the 13th day of Christmas, his true love sent him the biggest bird seed bell that there was.

It was too big.

 

[Trekker4747]

In a serious, but still speculative answer, the birds were probably fairly expensive. They aren't all that exotic best I can tell, but they would be elegant. Perhaps not the Geese so much, they're just annoying.

But yeah, there are five categories of people and in sheer numbers, they clearly win.

Golden Rings stand alone, though (musically as well if you think about it).

I've read that the five "golden rings" were supposed to be birds as well. (A gold-necked pheasant.)

 

[Alrik]

12 Days of Christmas: Why so many birds?

Because they taste like chicken???

 

[Lindley]

When I was in Target this morning, I saw a Christmas card that said "I was going to get you ---" (insert song here) "---but that sounded like an awful lot of bird poop, so I got you this gift card instead."

 

[RoJoHen]

12 Days of Christmas: Why so many birds?

Because they taste like chicken???

Chicken also tastes like chicken, and it's probably a lot cheaper.

 

[Servo]

I mentally rewrote the title of this thread to "12 Days of Christopher Walken."

Christmas just got a lot more awesome.

In Manchester we have "The 12 Days of Eric Cantona".