Christmas in the Basement Prelude: Have You Ever Seen a Partridge?

I'm listening to Christmas music. Specifically: The Longines Symphonette Living Music Program Proudly Presents Music for Christmas at Home (An exclusive new Treasury from The Living Music Program...the world's most beautiful and familiar music). And it's only November 13!

Why so early with the Christmas music? (What are you, the Holiday Police? Do you have a warrant? That's not a warrant -- it's a lyric sheet for "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring".)

Speaking of Christmas music (isn't that what I'm talking about?), my least favorite carol is "The Twelve Days of Christmas." I get so bored with cumulative songs. By the time we get to the seventh day of Christmas, I want to roast the French hens, throw my shoes at the turtle doves and hose down the...wait a minute -- what is a partridge anyway?

It's a bird.

Yeah, I know it's a bird, a fat pheasant full of pear juice. But do they live around here? I've never seen one. I think I saw a pheasant once, but it might've been a quail. Or a grouse. But maybe it was a partridge.

Come to think of it, have I ever seen a pear tree?

Regardless, that song is long and boring. It's like sitting through an episode of "Desperate Housewives" (except no one's a-milking those maids -- ho, ho ho!).

And, AND, by the last two days, the lyricist stopped trying. Drummers drumming? Pipers piping?

It's a stinker. The only version I can listen to without turning into a complete Scrooge is this'n: