The twelve days

Where to begin? I realize that the twelve days of Christmas actually start on Christmas day and extend into January, but that simply does not seem right, so I’m taking a stand and doing the countdown in reverse. It doesn’t make sense to still be drawing Christmas-related subjects into a new year, in fact it’s downright criminal (like the stores that put out Christmas items before Halloween—a guarantee of a one-way ticket straight to the hot place, if you ask me).

But the countdown beginning so late is nothing, compared to the other obvious questions. First, why is a seed-eating ground bird in a fruit tree? And moreover, how does one “give” a partridge in a pear tree to someone? Unless they actually buy the land surrounding the tree—which is highly unlikely, since that would be the most valuable element of the first day’s package and would thus be mentioned in the song—I expect a cage must be involved, or some sort of chain or rope, which doesn’t seem very Christmas-y. My true love wouldn’t remain my true love long if he were to chain a bird that likely has an issue with heights to a tree that has been uprooted, never mind that it is incredibly presumptuous to give someone a large orchard tree without first ensuring that they have a) enough space and b) a second tree of the same species for cross-pollination purposes. All in all, this is a poor gift. No way to start the twelve days.

See the entire series...

Hello all—my name is Bambi Edlund, I am new to SFG, and looking forward to taking part. I am an illustrator from Vancouver, B.C., working on a daily drawing project—so far it's two months and counting, my goal is a year without a miss. Yikes. For the past week I have been doing a countdown of the twelve days of Christmas, this is the first installation—please visit my blog www.lepenquotidien.com for the entire series (we're up to day nine).