CATHOLICISM

[Twyla]

ORIGIN OF
"THE TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS"

An Underground Catechism

You're all familiar with the Christmas song, "The Twelve Days of Christmas" I think. To most it's a delightful nonsense rhyme set to music. But it had a quite serious purpose when it was written.

It is a good deal more than just a repetitious melody with pretty phrases and a list of strange gifts.

Catholics in England during the period 1558 to 1829, when Parliament finally emancipated Catholics in England, were prohibited from ANY practice of their faith by law - private OR public. It was a crime to BE a Catholic.

"The Twelve Days of Christmas" was written in England as one of the "catechism songs" to help young Catholics learn the tenets of their faith - a memory aid, when to be caught with anything in *writing* indicating adherence to the Catholic faith could not only get you imprisoned, it could get you hanged, or shortened by a head - or hanged, drawn and quartered, a rather peculiar and ghastly punishment I'm not aware was ever practiced anywhere else. Hanging, drawing and quartering involved hanging a person by the neck until they had almost, but not quite, suffocated to death; then the party was taken down from the gallows, and disembowelled while still alive; and while the entrails were still lying on the street, where the executioners stomped all over them, the victim was tied to four large farm horses, and literally torn into five parts - one to each limb and the remaining torso.

The songs gifts are hidden meanings to the teachings of the faith. The "true love" mentioned in the song doesn't refer to an earthly suitor, it refers to God Himself. The "me" who receives the presents refers to every baptized person. The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In the song, Christ is symbolically presented as a mother partridge which feigns injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings, much in memory of the expression of Christ's sadness over the fate of Jerusalem: "Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How often would I have sheltered thee under my wings, as a hen does her chicks, but thou wouldst not have it so..."

The other symbols mean the following:

2 Turtle Doves = The Old and New Testaments
3 French Hens = Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues
4 Calling Birds = the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists
5 Golden Rings = The first Five Books of the Old Testament, the "Pentateuch", which gives the history of man's fall from grace.
6 Geese A-laying = the six days of creation
7 Swans A-swimming = the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments
8 Maids A-milking = the eight beatitudes
9 Ladies Dancing = the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit
10 Lords A-leaping = the ten commandments
11 Pipers Piping = the eleven faithful apostles
12 Drummers Drumming = the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed

--Fr. Hal Stockert 12/17/95

[Lovin' This Place]

The New Again video is beautiful.

[sometimeman]

Thank you Miss B*T*C*H about the comments of the video.

Twyla wrote:
"The Twelve Days of Christmas" was written in England as one of the "catechism songs" to help young Catholics learn the tenets of their faith - a memory aid, when to be caught with anything in *writing* indicating adherence to the Catholic faith could not only get you imprisoned, it could get you hanged, or shortened by a head - or hanged, drawn and quartered, a rather peculiar and ghastly punishment I'm not aware was ever practiced anywhere else. Hanging, drawing and quartering involved hanging a person by the neck until they had almost, but not quite, suffocated to death; then the party was taken down from the gallows, and disembowelled while still alive; and while the entrails were still lying on the street, where the executioners stomped all over them, the victim was tied to four large farm horses, and literally torn into five parts - one to each limb and the remaining torso.

You know twyla, regarding this, I think you have you "persecution" history wrong. All that you describe was done to those who did not subscribe to the idea of "pappa"

Just look at what the Spanish Missionaries did in their attempts to convert the "savage" Indians of south America These were not "protestant missionaries". They were representatives of "pappa"
and they were horrible, cruel, inhumane.

[serenity]

Merry Christmas, sometime

[sometimeman]

Yes! Thank you!
And, happy Hanukkah to you Serenity

[serenity]

sometimeman said:

Yes! Thank you!
And, happy Hanukkah to you Serenity

lol thank you

[sometimeman]

Guy Fawks and Bastille

In Our Ignorance we think how good it is to say "Under God" as we say the pledge of allegiance and good it is for our leaders to speak of "faith based initiatives". But, Oh! how good it would be if our schools still taught the truth of what happened in the past and why it happened. Oh! If only! We might not travel down the wrong path again.

France was still governed by privileged groups—the nobility and the clergy—while the productive classes were taxed heavily to pay for foreign wars, court extravagance, and a rising national debt. For the most part, peasants were small landholders or tenant farmers, subject to feudal dues, to the royal agents indirect farming (collecting) taxes, to the corvée (forced labor), and to tithes and other impositions. Backward agricultural methods and internal tariff barriers caused recurrent food shortages, which netted fortunes to grain speculators, and rural overpopulation created land hunger. Americans have The 4th of July; the French have Bastille Day. On July 14, 1789, an outraged group of Parisians stormed the Bastille, a fortress and prison in France where prisoners of influence were held, in hopes of capturing ammunition. Shortly thereafter, King Louis XVI and his wife Marie Antoinette took refuge in Versailles as the violent peasants pillaged and burned châteaux, and destroyed records of feudal dues; this reaction is known as the grande peur (great fear).For the peasant class, the Bastille stood as a symbol of the hypocrisy and corruption of the aristocratic government - controlled mostly by nobility and clergy. This important event marked the entry of the popular class into the French Revolution.

That's King Louis XVI head in the man's hand!

Yes, they actually cut the king's head off. Why? He took money from poor folks and gave to his preacher friends! The French so admired the government of the U.S. until the Statute of Liberty was a gift from France because of their admiration. And here we are today trying to go back where they fought so hard to get away from!

The Pope's Day celebration in Boston provides the best glimpse of their universe. Held every November 5 to commemorate the thwarting of the Catholic conspiracy in England, when Guy Fawkes attempted to blow up the Houses of Parliament in 1605, Pope's Day had become the high point of antipopery in New England. Also called Gunpowder Plot Day, this annual festival had special appeal on both sides of the Atlantic among urban artisans, especially of the lower ranks.

The celebrating of "Bonfire" or "Guy Fawkes Night" is well established in England. These days it is an excuse to let off fireworks and have a good time. Its origins are all but forgotten, although everyone knows of Guy Fawkes and the rough outline of the story. Any religious significance is certainly absent these days, except perhaps in Lewes (9) where 5th Nov is particularly relished.

Parliament abolished most holidays in Charles I's reign, but kept this celebration, which they felt dare not be forgotten. The tradition also crossed the Atlantic, though how widely it is still celebrated I do not know. New Zealand observes it still and parts of Nova Scotia. A correspondent affirms the celebration of "Pope's Day" formerly in parts of the US, though it seems that Hallowe'en has displaced any such celebration these days.

We've come so far down the road of forgetfulness till we allow preachers of this ungodly bunch to go unpunished for their crimes of sexual perversion against young boys. We have laws against moving them from parish to parish to keep their crimes undetected but we don't have "MEN" to enforce them!

[sometimeman]

NOW

George W Bush and Chief Justice Roberts Leave the Red Mass. Behind them you will see Laura Bush and Condoleeza Rice

And

THEN

The Concordat between the Vatican and the Nazis

Cardinal Secretary of State, Eugenio Pacelli (later to become Pope Pius XII) signs the Concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican at a formal ceremony in Rome on 20 July 1933. Nazi Vice-Chancellor Franz von Papen sits at the left, Pacelli in the middle, and the Rudolf Buttmann sits at the right.[/img]

[sometimeman]

Does your church make "Concordats" with the government? Why?

[summerose]

Nope, it sure doesn't.

[sometimeman]

Thanks for the reply Rose. Instead of "church", I should have said, "denomination"

You said no but, you didn't say why.

Catholicism is the only denomination that in addition to being a "church" is also a "state". Thats state as in "country" Vatican City is the "State" of the Catholic Church.

With countries as the United States, The Catholics deal on a government-to-government level. They appeal to our Secretary of State Condoleezzza

[sometimeman]

Sarkozy is criticized for Holocaust memorial plan
Sarkozy wrapped his plan in the cloak of religion, blaming the wars and violence of the last century on an "absence of God" and calling the Nazi belief in a hierarchy of races "radically incompatible with Judeo-Christian monotheism."
Posted Feb 17, 2008 10:53 AM PST
Category: FRANCE

Hitler was Catholic, and had sung in the choir at the monastery of Lambach as a child (where he first saw the Swastika as an architectural motif). Hitler was supported by the Vatican in his rise to power. Papal Nuncio Eugenio Pacelli was quite instrumental in helping create the Nazi empire, and was later rewarded by being elected, trading the Vatican's support for Hitler's promise to declare Catholicism Nazi Germany's state religion.

Sarkozy's comment about an "Absence of God" betrays a complete ignorance of actual history.

"The Party stands for positive Christianity." -- Article 24 of the Nazi Party Platform


Photo of Hitler on the cover of a German Christian magazine.
www.whatreallyhappened.com/ATHEISM/inquisition.html#hitler