The twelve days of Christmas

...come after Christmas, not before as the merchants would have us all believe. Christmas doesn’t end until Epiphany.

Rushing the season is de rigeur here in the former colonies, a very good example of which is that yesterday our daughter-in-law’s mother’s Christmas gift to us was nine boxes (you read that correctly) of chocolate candy, nine red heart-shaped boxes. Apparently Russell Stover’s was having a sale. I’m presuming these particular red heart-shaped boxes were left over from last February.

Not that I’m ungrateful, you understand. After all, it’s the thought that counts. She brought similar shopping bags full for the families of my three offspring.

But as my mother’s uncle, Joe Singer, the Philadelphia lawyer, used to say, do you get the point? The point is that it’s only the second day of Christmas and already we’ve received Valentine’s Day gifts.