Oh hey, would you look at that, it's December. Time for a song.

Last year I spent the entire month of December nitpicking Christmas carols (I'd try to link to each one, but it would pretty much mean every word in this sentence is a hyperlink and that would just be terrible).

There is one thing that a family member suggested which caught my attention though.  Something I regularly give too much thought to (as opposed to everything else I give too much thought to) is the song The Twelve Days Of Christmas.

This song, every time I hear it, has me questioning so much about its logic and structure.

For instance, if you go based on how the song is actually written, by the end of it your true love gave you just as many partridges in pear trees as he did drummers drumming.  I really, really hope you like pears.  And partridges.

Now, PNC Wealth Management has already done a lot of the hard work and came up with the "definitive" list of how much each item would cost (as well as what it cost back in 2013, they've been doing this for about 30 years now).  It's interesting to note that the price of swans has skyrocketed in the past year.  Something I just happen to know is that swans are rather hard to reliably breed and don't tend to do anywhere near as well as chickens, so the supply tends to vary a lot.   Overall, though, there aren't that many changes, and the price difference total between last year and this year is approximately one percent.

However.

I'm pretty sure we can go deeper into this.




Let's start with one I've taken the time to dig into before: lords a leapin'.

Now, "lord" could mean a lot of things.  Maybe you hired employees from Lord & Taylor to prance around for you, maybe you hired ten people named Lord to jump up and down.  If you take into account the fact that this happens for three days, did you hire a total of thirty "lords" or just have ten do their performance three times?

What if you want an actual "Lord," as in someone from English nobility?

Well, good luck with that.  Despite my research into attempts to hire British royalty to show up at parties and events, it doesn't seem likely you'd get anybody with an actual honorary title that's worth anything to show up for your loved one, much less three times, and much less ten of them.

Now, I know what you're saying.  You're saying, "but Erik, isn't it possible to buy a title?  I could just gather up ten of my friends, buy them titles, and then have them jump around like idiots for the cost of two six packs with two beers left over for me and my true love."

To which I say, "yes, but they won't be fully recognized "lords.""

You can buy a "lord" title from companies in England for anywhere from £18.95 to several thousand pounds, but what you're essentially buying is something you could just type up and print out on your own computer.  There's no official registry of "lords" in England, but by all appearances they know a real one when they see one.  You won't be able to just slap down money and expect to be able to hold the Queen's hand during a coronation ceremony.

Each organization claims to be the most "authentic" one, and one of the loudest and most impressive if the Manorial Society, which is an auction house that sells out titles for tens of thousands of pounds.  Prices seem to start in the £5,000 range.

One interesting thing about the Manorial Society is that they're currently offering feudal "lord and ladyship" titles for auction, however it's important to note that these are essentially meaningless since the feudal system was abolished back in 1660.  It'd be like owning a slip of paper stating you're the King of America, for all intents and purposes.

But here's the key thing.  You're trying to buy your way into British nobledom, and that's against the law.  Other countries have also outlawed buying official titles, such as Italy and Norway.  Most other countries don't bother, because it's absolutely meaningless since they only held any importance back when the country was a monarchy.  If you buy a title and wave it around in France, you'll be laughed out of the country.  Or mugged.

So, needless to say, buying an actual "lord" is pretty much not happening, and the same could possibly be said for hiring dancing "ladies" if you wanted the same nobility.  But we'll get to them another day.

If your true love was somehow able to gather together ten authentic "Lords" to dance and jump for you (as opposed to simply doing track hurdles or something), odds are your true love is already ridiculously powerful.  You might want to seriously start balancing out the power, wealth, and fame that would come to you against whatever is holding you back from accepting whatever weird marriage proposal this true love of yours is attempting to do with this gift offering.

I mean, why else would you give someone all this stuff for twelve consecutive days if you weren't trying to essentially get them to agree to marry you?

Tomorrow it'll be a regular topic, but I'll be sure to include an addendum as I over-analyze something else being given.

My Google search history for this month is going to be so weird.