Bark, the feral angels sing

So, Christmas carols, then. I like them as much as the next weirdo, but what do they actually mean? The bloody things are full of paradoxes: 'Hark the herald angels sing' is all well and good, but are we meant to hark to what the herald angels are singing, or are the herald angels just singing hark for the hell of it? And just what is all this harking business, anyway? It sounds like an onomatopeaic rendering of a common bodily function. Again, it's easy enough to understand what 'Fa la la la la la la la la' means (even if you don't agree with it), but how does one 'troll the ancient yuletide carol'?

Some carols are so full of 'Joy' and 'Merry' and what-not that you actually feel slightly ill after listening to the words. You'd think that only a chronic optimist could come up with the words of 'Merry Christmas':

We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
We wish you a merry Christmas
And a happy new year.

Enough with the merry! It's basically like the 'Happy happy joy joy song' gone bad, but it gets worse:

Good tidings we bring
To you and our king...

Those good tidings being -

We wish you a merry Christmas
And a happy new year!

Clearly, we are dealing with a monomaniac of some intensity. This psychopathology, as disturbing as it is, pales in insignificance when it is compared to the mother-of-all stalker songs, 'The 12 days of Christmas', when the obsessive - tagged with the somewhat ironic soubriquet of 'My true love' - sends to his victim, in quick succession:

A partridge in a pear tree
Two turtle doves
Three French hens
Four calling birds
Five gold rings.

Not to be outdone with five gold rings, he follows this up with -

Six geese a-laying
Seven swans a-swimming

And then, hoisting caution to the wind, concludes with

Eight maids a-milking
(Presumably with complementary cows, as the maids have to be milking something)
Nine ladies dancing
Ten lords a-leaping
Eleven pipers piping
and
Twelve drummers drumming.

Though, from the words of the song, it's not entirely clear whether he is content with sending her one partridge, two turtle doves (etc) for the whole period of the twelve days of Christmas, or whether he sends her one partidge on the first day, one on the second day, two turtle doves on the second day, two on the third day (etc, and the same for all the other gifts - which would, in the end, number in the hundreds). Either way, he's clearly insane, and hopefully the police have got him now.

Personally, I like to steer clear of the later Christmas carols, where Santa Claus, that bearded old loon with a beard and a 'list' that he's 'checking twice' to see whether you've been 'naughty or nice'. What the hell is he, the hallway monitor? Anyway, he's not the only one with a list.

So, reader, what's your favourite Christmas carol - or, to put it another way, your least unfavourite? Mine is possibly 'I Saw Three Ships' or 'God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen'.