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.

Back to introduction.
Forward to Six.

For today, this third day of Christmas meditations, I’m thinking not quite of French hens but rather the Gallic Rooster. No matter how far from the farm you are, you know that the rooster will crow at dawn to wake the world up. So today, I am thinking about awakening.

There is a line from one of my favorite holiday movies that I like: “There is a world going on beyond our problems”.  It’s easy, when things are dark, to shut everything out. To forget there is a world outside of your own problems. And we shouldn’t.

One of the worst things I have ever gone through was infertility treatments. While I would never want to go through it again, or wish it one someone else, I am so happy to be the person I am now versus the person who started treatments. I don’t like the scars, but knowing that there are so many different personal hells, just in infertility, has made me so much more aware of how many hells exist I don’t even know about and how many people walk them everyday.

So I try to remember, every day, how hard life can be for people. And I try to be considerate of those days they are broken or sensitive and I try to help. And I try to think of that, not just for people I meet, but for everyone. I want to be awake to the rest of the world, and not just retreat into my own life and my own problems. It’s not easy to do, especially if I am hurting, but it is so important, unless we end up cold and callous.

So when I hear the French hens, I will think of the rooster doing his best to wake everyone up, no matter how little we want to be awake.

Back to the introduction.
Forward to the Fourth Day.