The song The Twelve Days of Christmas is in the news today. PNC Financial Services Group has calculated how much it would cost to send your true love the gifts described in the song. It would cost $66 thousand and some change, up $1070 from last year, or 1.6%. And the government says there is no inflation.
That is my first problem with this. My second problem is how PNC has time to figure up what all this stuff would cost. Shouldn't they be spending their time doing stock research? This is not a really simple calculation; it would take some time to figure it all out. Remember, the first day the guy in the song gives his girlfriend a partridge in a pear tree. There I go making assumptions again. It could be a same-sex relationship. But for the sake of arguement, I am going to make the leap of faith that we are talking about a guy giving this stuff to a woman. The second day he gives her two turtle-doves and another partridge in a pear tree. So we have to figure twelve partridges and pear trees, twenty-two doves, thirty French hens, etc. Back when I was working, we had to keep humping just to get the required work done in an eighty hour week. We didn't have time to waste on trivial crap like this unless our boss pulled us off of what we were supposed to be doing to do some hare-brained time-wasting project that was going to keep us from getting the real work done and that would keep us there after working hours. Oh, wait. This is starting to crystalize in my mind, now. Never mind. I understand. My hat is off to the poor drudge who did all these calculations and missed spending quality time with his or her spouse and children.
The third problem I have is that these gifts, given with love and good intention, are going to start piling up, unwanted, pretty quickly. I know my own true love, although she likes small animals, after being inundated with fowl the first three days, will lose her sense of humor. She would say to me, "Jimbo, I appreciate the thought, but what I am going to do with ten frigging birds and three damned trees?"
She might appreciate the five gold rings on the fifth day, but after receiving another ten birds (four calling birds, et. al) and another tree on the fourth day, she would probably not allow me the opportunity of coming across with the rings. I'd be out on my ass by the fourth day, if not before.
Perhaps when the original song was written the gifts it described were something someone would want, but in the twenty-first century we have too much going on to find time to tend birds and an orchard. Most of us don't have cows, so we would have trouble keeping the maids a-milking occupied. And, although music hath charm to soothe the savage breast, most of us would prefer a musical group with maybe a guitar, a bass, keyboard and drums, rather than a bunch of pipers piping.
The whole point is that you should buy something reasonably priced for your true love and give it to her on Christmas rather than shelling out sixty-six large and spreading it over almost two weeks. But the most important thing is, if you have a true love, to tell her that she's special and to tell her that you enjoy being with her, and most of all make sure you spend plenty of time with her this holliday season. Don't be like the guy who spent his evenings and weekends pulling all the numbers together so we'd all be able to know what the twelve days of Christmas would cost.
Someone please pass me the wassel and mistletoe.
Make sure your best girl knows she's the best and spend as much time with her and your family during the hollidays. That's the way we do it in Jimbo's world.
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