Three decades ago, Father Harold Stockert\u2019s passion for history sent him digging through stacks of correspondence between French Jesuits and their embattled brethren across the English Channel.<\/p>\n\n
It wasn\u2019t easy being a Roman Catholic in Elizabethan England. It was, in fact, illegal and often downright dangerous. This Jesuit correspondence was particularly intense after the 1611 publication of the King James Version, when Catholics in England needed the help of the French in publishing a Catholic Bible.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cYou bump into all kinds of interesting things when you read original documents,\u201d said Stockert, who now serves at Saints Peter and Paul Byzantine Catholic Church in Granville, N.Y. \u201cThis correspondence included a lot of details about what life was like for Catholics in England. I mean, you did have Jesuits being hanged, drawn and quartered. People can look it up.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
One detail fascinated the priest, a reference to English Catholics using many symbolic songs and poems \u2014 some serious, some light-hearted \u2013 to help them cling to their faith. One children\u2019s song may have been part of a dance or a game and focused on the season between Dec. 25 and Jan. 6, the Feast of the Epiphany.<\/p>\n\n
It began: \u201cOn the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
In the midst of his other research, Father Stockert took a few notes about \u201cThe Twelve Days of Christmas\u201d and later wrote an article about the song for friends and parishioners. He posted this article \u2013 complete with documentary references \u2013 on an ecumenical computer site in 1982, back in the early days of online networks.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cThe \u2018true love\u2019 mentioned in the song doesn\u2019t refer to an earthly suitor, it refers to God Himself,\u201d he wrote. \u201cThe \u2018me\u2019 who receives the presents refers to every baptized person. The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. Christ is symbolically presented as a mother partridge which feigns injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n
The turtle doves represented the Old and New Testaments, while the three French hens symbolized the virtues of faith, hope and charity. Four calling birds? The four evangelists and their Gospels. The five golden rings correspond to the \u201cPentateuch\u201d that opens the Hebrew Bible. The six geese a-laying stood for the six days of creation. The seven swans a-swimming represented the seven sacraments. Eight maids a milking? Eight beatitudes. Nine ladies dancing? Nine fruits of the Holy Spirit. Ten lords a-leaping? Ten Commandments. Finally, the 11 pipers represented the 11 faithful apostles and the 12 drummers the doctrines in the Apostle\u2019s Creed.<\/p>\n\n
Today, versions of this article dot the Internet, usually with no mention of the author, including Protestant versions linking the song to \u201cpersecuted Christians,\u201d in general. And every year, this Christmas lesson circulates via e-mail. Some of these texts are much shorter than his original article and others include material that he did not write. Most importantly, none of these articles include his bibliographical references.<\/p>\n\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got all kinds of people writing me demanding references for my work,\u201d he said. \u201cI wish I could give them what they want, but all of my notes were ruined when our church had a plumbing leak and the basement flooded.\u201d Meanwhile, he said, his copy of the original article is on \u201ca computer floppy disk that is so old that nobody has a machine that can read it, anymore.\u201d<\/p>\n\n