‘Tis the season for listening to non-stop Christmas songs on the radio. Although I could do without Mariah Carey’s All I Want for Christmas is You, I did hear a nice version of The Little Drummer Boy that got me thinking.
I was recalling seven months ago, when we first brought Lucy home. She was so small and so precious. We received many gifts and many visitors. However, none of them included an 8-year-old beating a drum.
I can’t imagine allowing a pre-teen with a drum set to walk up and start banging away in front of a newborn. That line about “The ox and lamb kept time” should probably be restated as “The animals went freakin’ nuts when the kid began to make all that noise.”
Consider the line after the boy asks “Shall I play for you (pa rum pum pum pum) on my drum?” The response is “Mary nodded… Pa rum pum pum pum.” Perhaps her intent by nodding was not to signal agreement or permission. Perhaps she was actually gesturing toward the door with her head, implying “Get out of here with that thing before you upset the baby!”
Seriously, I grew up with two drummers in the family. A drum solo is really not a cool baby gift. ”Come, they told me…” was missing the second line “but leave that drum at home.”
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Ben, I will never hear that song in the same light again, LOL. Too funny but also, oh so true. My uncle bought a drum set for my brother when he was six years old and almost drove us all crazy, until it miraculously got a hole in the bass drum. “No one knows how it got there” and I was not telling!!!!!
Yeah, well their entertainment resources were a bit limited and drummers were a happy distraction to plague, famine, drought, genocidal leaders, barncrashing and manger snogging. And who’s to say the kid showed up with a snare drum? Is it specified? Technically, timpani are drums and those can be quite dramatic…a little kid rolling into the delivery room with a trio of timpani WOULD be an exciting gift! An African djembe is way groovy, and anyone that can swing a spry tipper into an Irish bodhran can’t help but draw a foot-tappin crowd.
I think Ben’s just envious becasue there are no Xmas songs like “Come, she begged of me and fix my wi-fi”.
“Twelve drummers drumming”…now THAT’s a Christmas carol lyric! I’ll bet those guys were the twelve well wishers that were shown the door by the disciples’ birth mothers. Those guys didn’t get a holiday named after them now, did they? Mary (the virgin) knew what she was doing…tolerate the percussionist, friends.
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