Five Rings to Rule Them All

There are twelve days of Christmas.

Secular culture tries to make me feast during the Advent fast and then wants to cheat me out of most of the Christmas feast. For proper jollification, I need twelve days to give gifts to the awesome people in my life. Gift giving is a symbol of love. . .not love . . . and money need not be spent. There is plenty of advice freely given on gift giving, some better than others, most trying to make a sale. That most endless of Christmas songs A Partridge in a Pear Tree is not generally good gift giving advice for those not in the nobility hundreds of years ago, but today does suggest giving five golden rings to our true love.

Why five golden rings?

Five is the number of grace and rings are the gifts of lords to servants (think Beowulf) and so this gift symbolizes God’s gift of grace to us and our chance to give grace to those dependent on our generosity.

This is a good lesson and even has some truth to it, but it isn’t what the song means . . . like any other Internet “explanation” of the song.

The song is jolly nonsense and there is no particular meaning to gifts or the numbers. This is the older equivalent of the game we used to play: “I am going on a trip. . . ” where we listed items (usually absurd!) for each letter of the alphabet that we were taking on a trip. Like the alphabet game, A Partridge in a Pear Tree tests our memory and the patience of older folk forced to sit through it. Again.

But today I will give a gift and American culture has stuck the song in my head: so why not five golden rings?

Rings are good to give. After all, rings are the traditional gift establishing a relationship between people. Five is a number of God’s grace in the Biblical terms. Count the Levitical sacrifices and the feeding of the Five Thousand with five loaves. We need not take such symbolic meaning or numerology too seriously, but we can use both as means to communicate.

The right gifts, like a fine ring, are communication that speaks without words in settings where words might not be appropriate. I wear two rings every day: my wedding ring and my Torrey Honors ring. When I look down at my hand, even now, I see meaning. Rings work that way.

We exchange rings at weddings because rings symbolize love. Any starting point for a love relationship feels arbitrary and true love never ends. Whatever the status of married souls in eternity (and nobody is quite sure), the love will endure.

We gave rings at the Torrey Honors Institute at Biola University because rings are good gifts for celebrating commitment to a community. I wear my Torrey ring every day because I remain part of the growing community of those pursuing the Logos of God: the good, the true, and beauty.

Rings are serious gifts. My parents would never let me buy a girlfriend a ring, not even a friendship ring, for this reason. They know my overly serious and romantic nature. Whatever someone else might have meant by giving a ring, I had read fairy tales too often . . . I would have meant something big. They rightly pushed off such gifts until I was older.

The first ring I received (which I still have) was from my high school: New Covenant Christian School. Every time I see it, I am pulled back to my friends (Doug! Becky!) and my teachers (too many to list!) and remember to pray for them. They are still part of me.

I will not get five golden rings for Hope this Christmas. First, I cannot afford the gold. Second, by now I would have purchased over one hundred and fifty rings for her. That is a bit excessive. Symbols multiplied are ruined. Instead, the rings have become (for me) symbolic of a ring for each finger of my true love’s hand: total love, total commitment, in complete communion.

Gifts will be given today. I do not have to give gifts. They are not my love, but it is good to have an outward sign of the inner reality of how I feel about my true love. May I look at the rings on my hands and remember to make a reality of that silly old song pounded into my head . . . and give my true love the equivalent of five golden rings.