Jack Kent's Twelve Days of Christmas

Jack Kent's

Twelve Days of Christmas

 

I look forward to Christmas time each year for many reasons.  One of which is the basket full of Christmas books.  Most of these books, the kids only ask for during the Christmas season.  But one has been a constant favorite with my son since about July. 

 

Jack Kent's retelling of the old English carol begins on the first day of Christmas,

 

 

with a partridge in a pear tree.  Familiar ground, I know.  But on the second day,

 

 

this familiar ground begins to grow some very strange fruit, indeed.  And by the fourth day,

 

 

 

our delight grows as does the young miss' panic.

 

 

By the tenth day, my son's laughter drowns out my caroling.

 

 

 

But no matter. At this point, the characters' expressions tell the story well enough.

 

 

In case you don't get it, the joke of the book is in the fact that on each successive day of Christmas, the love struck suitor brings what he's brought on Christmas days past, plus one new thing. 

 

 

So, by day twelve, the object of the suitor's love has recieved 12 partridges in 12 pear trees,  

 

22 turtledoves (2 doves x 11 days), 30 french hens (3 hens x 10 days),

36 collie birds (4 birds x 8 days),

 

 

35 golden rings (5 rings x 7 days), and so on , and so on,

 

 

and so on.

 

Kind of puts the carload of blinking, singing battery eaters from grandma into perspecitve.  At least poohing collie birds aren't roosting on the sofa.

 

Merry Christmas!