Eddie Izzard jokes that at any Christmas party, when people hear this part of this carol, they run into the room to sing it.
An additional funny thing is that it’s so out of place. The first few days are gifts of birds, here’s a sensible if overkill gift of the only jewelry in the song, and then we are back to two more birds. I had a personal a-ha! Moment when I learned that ‘gold rings’ could be a variation on ‘gold spinks’ (an old name for goldfinch). While the first printed version of the song we have has five finger rings in the illustration, that doesn’t mean that the mistake didn’t date to 1780. Logically, it doesn’t fit to have the rings in the middle of the birds, to me. So, for the fifth day of Christmas, I will be thinking about change and mistakes.
It’s easy to be scared of change and mistakes. It leads to the unknown and out of our comfort zones, and it’s frightening to be somewhere we don’t know well. Even if the place we’re used to is miserable. But change can lead to growth and a chance to move forward and into a better and happier comfort zone. And mistakes are a chance to refine and move forward. I try to remember that mistakes are proof of risk, and without risk there is no chance of reward.
In our house, we have a wonderful desk my husband make over 20 years ago. It has a drop down leaf, so we’d always have clean desk space, no matter how messy the desk got. The first time he cut the leaf, he cut it just a bit too small. Since then, the mistake he had made has been used to create larger table space for parties, a top to the rabbit hutch and it’s currently a support for our Christmas tree. We still call it ‘the mistake’ and agree it’s been an incredibly useful mistake over the years.
So, on this fifth day of Christmas, I will remember that mistakes aren’t bad by definition, only when you allow them to be so.