Devan’s Dozen: Christmas Edition
The lighting of the Country Club Plaza always marks the beginning of the holiday season in Kansas City. PHOTO CREDIT: Jenny Turner
The Gaggle of Garishly Gaudy Gifts from the 12 Days of Christmas
Published December 10, 2021
Every life has those milestone moments in life that you will cherish for as long as you live.
The day you graduate college.
The day you meet the love of your life.
The day your first child is born.
That day that a vending machine gives you two packages of Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups for the price of one*.
The morning after one of your best friends proposes to his girlfriend; when he shoots you a text to honor you with the question that you secretly hoped he would always ask:
“Hey man, 12 Days of Christmas came on the radio and now we’re debating which gift is the best one and which is the worst. Would you weigh in here?”
Plaza lights, ugly sweaters, ice skating at Crown Center, Hallmark movies, peppermint everything, and that blasted song. These things mark the onset of the holiday season. But still, there are so many questions.
What in the Sam Hill are the 12 days of Christmas? Were you today years old when you discovered you might be “one day of Christmas poor”? You can bet your sweet behind that I was!
Do the affluent get a fortnight of presents? It’s bad enough that I was getting socks from Santa while the other kids got Segas and Furbies but now you’re telling me I’ve been getting scammed out of an extra 11 days of Christmas? Thanks a lot Mom and Dad! Is that why Winter Break is so freaking long? So all those rich smeggers could observe their full holiday? Seriously, when are these 12 days^ and who is celebrating them?!
“And if you see a sign that says, ‘Peep Show,’ it doesn’t mean that they’re letting you look at presents before Christmas.”
And then there’s the gifts themselves. What in the world is going on with the recap of this song? Are these compounding gifts or are they cumulative? Am I gonna be stuck with a dozen frakkin’ trees at the end of this whole charade? Or, am I just recapping what happened on previous episodes of Christmas like the family secretary stuck in the corner, writing names in a notebook while wedding gifts are unwrapped?
All of these questions before the most problematic element of this song - the bird fetish. I mean, Judas Priest! What is that even about?! Who has it? Is it the giver? The recipient? Both? Is this the singers’ true love because they found a fellow orinthomaniac? Maybe these two weirdos are actually made for each other. Or is it the tragic tale of someone forcing their orintheology on their mate?
Even if you happen to like all those fowl sky beasts, who wants to feed and clean up after all those birds? “Merry Christmas, here’s some chores!” is the kind of thing I heard on Christmas morning. Surely, the “12 days rich” crowd can do better. Of course, if you have those dozen day dollas, you probably have people who do the chores for you. Heck, at that point you might even be able to afford for the gifts to be compounding. Even then, can you seriously imagine being stuck with 42 geese come Three Kings’ Day? As Erin Hannon famously discovered, birds are a horrible gift.
Which got me thinking, how would I rank the 12 Days of Christmas? What would my reaction be to receiving the gifts of the famed 12 days?
12. Six Geese-A-Laying
“What psycho would send that as a gift?”
Are these snow geese or Canadian geese? Birds are an effing weird gift to begin with but pray to whatever god you believe in that these are not Canadian geese. You know why the Canucks are so nice? They’re overcompensating for their bastard of a mascot. You think you know what it is to be afraid? You don’t know fear until you’ve been hunted down by a half dozen cobra chickens! They swoop. They lunge. They whap. They peck. And just like the customers at an Alabama buffet, they don’t need teeth to bite. They’re so aggressive that their honk was made the official sound of road rage years ago. For duck’s sake, there’s actually a class of geese called fighting geese. Ain’t nobody got time for that!
Even worse, lest we forget the key characteristic here, these demon fowl are “a-laying”! Sufferin’ succotash! I have to deal with six of these corksuckers but now they’re reproducing?!? Next thing you know I have a full-blown tribble situation on my hands but it’s with a gaggle of geese. By comparison, Shatner had it easy with his pile of furry space pillows. No thanks!
11. Four Calling Birds
DANK FERRIK! More flippin’ birds! Seriously? Come on now, I’m a millennial! Maybe if they were texting birds we’d be on to something but who in their right mind calls anymore? What other “hot” gift items is my out-of-touch “true love” going to get me? A VCR? A typewriter? Some gift certificates to Blockbuster and Applebee’s? Is she going to burn me a CD? Post a forkin’ poem about me on their Xanga?
Wait a tick, you mean to tell me that they’re called calling birds because they make noise? Not only do I have 10 birds, with an ash load on the way, but this quartet of squawkers is just going to sit on their perch screeching and keeping me up all night? If I’m going to lose sleep, I want it to be due to work-related stress and deep-seeded insecurities like a normal person! This is straight-up bullshirt.
10. Two Turtle Doves
“Well, two turtle doves. I’ll tell you what you do: you keep one, and you give the other one to a very special person. You see, turtle doves are a symbol of friendship and love. And as long as each of you has your turtle dove, you’ll be friends forever.”
I guess at this point, I should be thankful that it’s only a pair of birds but my fowl count is climbing at an alarming rate. If a woman roaming Central Park ever saves me from a pair of bandits, it’s nice to know that I have a thank you gift on standby to show her that we’ll always be friends. It seems like a nice gesture but in reality, it’s pretty messed up - even for a nine year-old sadist. “Here pigeon lady, I have all these awesome gifts waiting for me back in my Plaza Hotel Suite but here have another frickin’ bird.” You know who is worse than the person that gives you a pair of pigeons as a gift? The jagweed that gives you only one and sentences it to a lifetime of isolation.
The message of turtle doves is quite heartwarming but in practice? These birds are downright horrifying! The first time I saw that swarm of feathered rats descend on Marv and Harry, it gave me nightmares for weeks. Remember when they exacted revenge on Barney Stinson? All that coo-cooing would drive me insane. Not only are they creepy AF, but bum chickens are harbingers of disease and they crap everywhere! Sure they can deliver the mail but back to the calling birds quandary - who the frick writes letters anymore?!
Just in case you weren’t aware, geese are the worst.
9. Eight Maids-A-Milking
At a quick glance, this seems like such a nice gift but, is it really? I mean, who in their right mind needs that much milk? I can’t even finish a half gallon before it expires. Nobody has time for breakfast anymore. I can assure you that I will not eat enough cereal in this lifetime to justify having one milkmaid, let alone EIGHT!
“Worse? How could things get any worse?! Take a look around you, Ellen! We’re at the threshold of hell!”
And then there’s the issue that these maids are actively a-milkin’! I don’t own any cows. This means they are coming with a bare minimum of eight cows! And that’s bare frickin’ minimum! Only eight would be super inefficient. My uncle had a dairy farm in Wisconsin and a few people were able to handle milking around 50 cattle. These are bona fide professionals. I have to believe that eight lactose extraction savants such as these would be handling at least a hundred head. I don’t have a barn. Heck, I don’t even have a garage. Where in the H. E. Double Hockey Sticks am I going to put all those flippin’ Holsteins and Guernseys?
It’s bad enough that I have a horde of geese on the way but I’m now about to have more cows than a Chick-Fil-A commercial. After all, cows have to give birth at least once a year to keep producing milk. And let’s not forget the horrendous smell. Pigs always get the bad rap but there is no more foul smelling farm animal than the cow. These maids are a beautiful, gleaming Trojan horse bearing a horde that will assault all of my senses.
8. Ten Lords-A-Leaping
First things first, I always screw up this lyric. It’s the worst lyric of the song. If you’re already giving someone ten lords, might as well add one more and make it flow alliteratively. “Eleven Lords-A-Leaping” - you see how much better that sounds? How much easier it rolls off the tongue? It is a horrible song lyric and just as terrible of a gift.
Secondly, who wants this? What kind of sane person would ever go, “You know what everyone needs this holiday season? Some leaping lords!” Where do you even find this kind of shazbot?! It’s not like you can just walk into Target and fill the cart up with a bunch of lords. You ever watch Game of Thrones? Lannisters, Targaryens, Starks, Tyrells. Absolutely nothing good comes from having that many lords lurking, or in this case leaping, about.
7. Seven Swans-A-Swimming
“Now I’m not saying build a whole show around animals. All I’m suggesting is that we occasionally throw in a little pet appeal. Some birds, a squirrel...”
BLURGH!!! What is with all these flappin’ birds! Now, granted, swans are inherently one of the few exceptions to the notion that “all birds suck”. I mean, they’re beautiful and graceful and they’re going to mind their own business. They’ll just float around my pond looking awesome and not bothering anyone. Passersby will love them! Oh wait, I DON’T HAVE A POND! I am so opposed to birds in the bath that I won’t even bathe with a rubber ducky but now I have to share the tub with seven of these fudgin’ behemoths just so they can be a-swimming? How the fork is that supposed to work?!
Also what kind of deckhead gives you an odd number of swans? It’s pretty common knowledge that swans mate for life so now I have to worry about cheering up the odd bird out, come February, because everyone else is cuffed for the holiday? Apparently my truculent “true love” finds sick pleasure in cruelly isolating birds, as evidenced by the turtle doves and now the swans.
Cattle kill four times as many people per year as sharks do. Where am I going to put all these lactating death machines? PHOTO COURTESY OF: Pixabay / Public Domain
6. Eleven Pipers Piping
“I don’t know what to say except it’s Christmas, and we’re all in misery.”
The first thing that always comes to mind when I hear bagpipes is one of the greatest movies of all time, The Departed. We all know how awesome bagpipes are and I am most definitely on board. But, do I really need 11 of them? Why so many? That’s going to get old so freakin’ fast. And back to my earlier point, does it really hurt to go to 10 Pipers Piping to give us the much more satisfying lyric of 11 Lords-a-Leaping? Also I think a key part of what makes pipers awesome is that it seems like they’re for special occasions only. Do I really need any amount of pipers around 24/7?
Is this some coy attempt by my love to get us to take the next step in our relationship? Do they think that with 11 pipers blaring at all hours (combined with the four calling birds that are still wreaking havoc on my eardrums) that I’ll lodge enough neighbor complaints where I have no choice but move in with my S.O.? I understand there’s nothing more midwestern than good old-fashioned passion-aggression but I really feel like this could have just been a conversation. How healthy is this relationship?
5. Three French Hens
“My cat killed a turtledove; the French hens have started pulling out my hair to make a nest.”
BIRDS WOMP! I don’t want any more birds! I SAID IT FOUR TIMES! How many more times do I have to @#$%&! say it?! What’s even the point of all these feathered flucks? Is this some kind of bizarre test to see if I’ll be a good parent? What is she trying to even tell me?! And why, God, why must she use birds?
Hold up a minute, these aren’t just birds - they’re chickens, and chicken is delicious. Knowing how big of jerks chickens are always makes eating them all the more enjoyable. Mind you I have never had a French hen but French fry it with 11 herbs and spices and it’s gotta be good right? As my man Samwise would say, “Now all we need is a few good taters.” Maybe some mac ‘n cheese, green beans, fried okra, and cornbread? Slice of pie afterwards? This is shaping up to be quite the Christmas feast!
4. A Partridge in a Pear Tree
SON OF A NUTCRACKER! Another dadgum bird?! ARGH!!!! I am going to lose my bloody mind! One of the creepiest movies in history is aptly named The Birds because they’re that freaking scary! Bird people are already freaking weirdos to begin with. Nobody, and I mean nobody, likes birds so much that they want to receive 23 of them at Christmas. What the deuce is wrong with my “true love”?!
“Eleven, including me. Five boys, six girls, four parents, two drivers, and a partridge in a pear tree.”
There is a silver lining here though - the bird comes with its own tree. There’s no expectation for me to shelter or care for this bird, unlike the others. It’s just going to sit in its tree and stay the heck outside. The world can always use more trees and this is a fruit-bearing tree to boot. I mean, I LOVE PEARS! Fingers crossed that they’re Genovian pears. Everyone knows Genovia has the best pears. And who knows? I might get lucky and the little son-of-a-biscuit will just fly away.
Regardless, like I was sayin’, pear is the fruit of the tree. You can grill it, broil it, bake it, sauté it, eat it raw. There’s uh pear pies, pear tarts, pear crisp. Pan-fried, deep fried, stir fried. There’s pear popcorn, pear cobbler, pear crumble bars, pear cake, pear cookies, pear custard, pear soup, pear stew, pear salad, pear cider, pear wine, pears and pork chops, pears and cheese, pear sandwich. That, that’s about it.
Seriously, bagpipes are awesome.
3. Nine Ladies Dancing
“Earl Cross: Here Francis, I’ve got something for you. Merry Christmas!
Frankie Cross: A choo-choo train?
Earl Cross: No, it’s five pounds of veal.
Frankie Cross: But Daddy I asked Santa for a choo-choo.
Earl Cross: Then go out and get a job and buy a choo-choo!”
Hallelujah! No more flocking birds! Granted this is a lot of personnel I am acquiring but who doesn’t love a good dance team? A crew of dancing ladies makes everything better! Want proof? When Jerry Buss bought the Lakers in the late seventies, he had one of the greatest duos of all time in Magic Johnson and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar but he still wasn’t satisfied. E.J. and the Big A weren’t enough for Jerry. He introduced the Laker Girls because everyone knows that a dance team gets people hyped. Go to any Vegas act and there’s always showgirls on standby ready to hype up the crowd. You’ve got a white tiger running about? Whoop-de-freaking-doo! Without showgirls, you’ve got nothing!
Has this litany of suspicious gift-giving left me worried that my “true love” is a passive aggressive piece of work? Do I think that this might be some messed-up test of my fidelity from a person who clearly struggles to express themselves? Am I concerned? Perhaps a little bit. The holiday season is revealing some real issues in this relationship but after a bunch of just, awful gifts, I might as well enjoy this one. Maybe I can pair them with the leaping lords? After all, having your own dance crew to get people hyped about your appearance? It does not get much more baller than that. I just hope this gift includes a fog machine and a block rocker.
2. Twelve Drummers Drumming
HOLY SCHMIDT! I was wrong. You know what’s more baller than having a dance crew to get people hyped? It’s having your own motherforkin’ drum line droppin’ a cadence wherever you go! If this is the Atlanta A&T line? I might even be able to forgive her for the birds. I’ve got no time for a bunch of scrubs from Morris Brown or Clark-Atlanta. It’s Devon Miles or nothing!
You know how special it is to get a drum solo at Christmas time? At the first Christmas, Jesus’s favorite gift was a poor shepherd boy doing his best John Bonham impression in a barn. Now take that times twelve with some drummers who have received some formal training. That kid was tapping away on some busted-ash secondhand snare. I’m rolling with bass, cymbals, quads, timpanis, and you know I’ll have a totally britchin’ glockenspiel to tie this whole thing together. Yeah, it’s going to be loud AF, but I’m here for it!
Watch out everyone, I have my own theme music and it’s an amazing wall of percussion accompanied by dancing ladies and leaping lords. Get on board now because this hype train is leaving the station!
1. Five Golden Rings
CHEESE AND RICE! Was that so frickin’ hard?! After four days of birds, this corkblorker finally got me a good gift! And we all know it’s the best gift because in the song, everyone changes the tune to emphasize how great the golden rings were. “Fiiiiiivveee Goool-den Riiinnngsssssss!” Every time it comes up in the countdown, every singer makes it a point to emphasize that on one day out of 12, my true love finally got it right.
I mean, this is an all-time epic gift! Do you realize how special five gold rings are? People throw themselves into Mount Doom just to be able to hold one gold ring. Guys have moved from Ohio to Florida back to Ohio and then to California over the course of two decades and they still don’t have five rings to show for it. My only challenge is deciding which ring to wear each day. Do I dare wear all five at once? Yeah, it’s a bit tacky but I feel like a guy with his own drumline and dance team can pull it off.
One Band, One Sound baby! If you don’t think of Atlanta A&T when you hear “drumline” , we can’t be friends. PHOTO CREDIT - Drumline (2002), Twentieth Century Fox
And on the thirteenth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…
Hopefully, my stuff back.
I’m out. This is clearly a very unhealthy relationship.
I mean, it’s like she doesn’t even know me. I didn’t ask for any of these things! What kind of person gifts you 23** motherflocking wing-flappers?! Why even put all that time into compiling an Amazon Wish List if she’s just going to take one glace at it and go, “Eff it. I’ll get him some birds and cows.”
“Buzz, your girlfriend. WOOOOF!”
In hindsight, this relationship was about as functional as a McDonald’s ice cream machine. She was such a hot and cold personality that always had to go to the most extreme measures. One day, she gives me five gold rings and the next day, that witch is sending over a sixer of Satan swans. I can’t believe it took me 12 Days of Christmas to realize how toxic of a situation I was in. I could never be with such a cotton-headed ninny muggins.
In 2018, the Consumer Price Index (CPI) estimated the total cost of all 78 of these gifts to be $39,094.93. If my true love is actually out there, reading this - and feels inclined to drop 40 Gs on me - just buy me a Lexus with one of those gaudy “December to Remember” bows so I know that it’s real.
Happy Holidays to all of my readers! Wishing you all a Happy Hanukkah, Happy St. Nicholas Day, Happy Festivus, Merry Christmas, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year, and all the rest!
Except for Todd from the Guy’s Snacks’ Warehouse - you know what you did.
Those Pesky Endnotes I Often Insist Upon
* The day was June 29, 2011. It was a beautiful summer day in Springfield, Massachusetts and I had walked across the street to grab lunch from my favorite sandwich place. On the way back, I hit up the vending machine in the lobby where I officed and that when the magic happened. I tell you, it was glorious. With all due respect to my future firstborn, I cannot imagine that any moment will ever top receiving two Reese’s for the price of one.
^ The 12 Days of Christmas are December 25 (Christmas) through January 6 (The Epiphany OR Three Kings’ Day) and marks the supposed span between the birth of Christ and the arrival of the Magi.
** Unless, these are indeed compounding gifts which would mean a whopping 188 birds. But on the bright side, at least that would also mean 40 gold rings. Not sure that’s a trade-off that I am willing to accept.
A special thank you to Nathan Doyle and Samuel Hildreth for proofreading, and contributing to this piece.
