Once, around this time of year, my father-in-law, the late Stanley E. Coppock, asked me — I have no doubt whatsoever he was simply trying to humor me — what I’d like for Christmas. In the manner that we often traded barbs, I responded, “How about a partridge in a pear tree?”

That would have been a perfect gift. I like birds of all types, but I hadn’t the faintest notion as to where he could buy one. There are many considerations: price, availability, the ability to survive in New Mexico, and the aggressiveness of our cats, of which we had three, namely Fluffy, Tuffy and Liberace.

Stanley didn’t disappoint. Christmas morning, a tidy, wrapped gift with my name lay under the tree at my in-laws’ house. Although I assume a partridge is a small animal that doesn’t need huge volumes of air to survive, I was still concerned over the bird’s lack of air. I discovered something like I had asked for: a cartridge in a bare tree. At least the scansion would have pleased poets like e.e.cummings.

Stanley of course blamed the misunderstanding on a hearing aid malfunction. He had found a metal, springy thingy that once held bullets. It was wired to a dry twig, and thus the cartridge in a bare tree. I took it to work, when I was teaching, placed it on my desk and asked my students to identify the gift, under threat of a lowered grade for incorrect guesses.

They played along, although maybe one of 10 even came close to guessing what the object was. I heard a couple of the students who had caught on say they were planning to create a present just like that for a family member. But lest we proceed too far with this lowered-grades-for-incorrect-guesses scenario, let me explain there was no way a teacher could ever get away with that.

I suspect that if I were to have threatened to lower a grade for a bad guess today, a legion of lawyers, led by Hanna Skandera, would have appeared at my office the next day.

Of all the Christmas ditties, I like “The 12 Days of Christmas” the most. In a column written long ago I mentioned that the repeating chorus of that tune fails to make it clear whether each of the 12 gifts is given only once, or whether each day provides an increasing obligation to create a milking-laying-swimming-leaping-cooking-dancing-piping-drumming combination menagerie and congregation.

After all, on the first day, the only gift the suitor presents is a partridge in a pear tree. On the second day of Christmas (go ahead and hum along!), the beau gives not only another partridge, but two turtledoves as well. It’s an escalating process based on how genuine is the love given by the woman’s “true love.”

Should you plan any huge act of benevolence in the next 15 days, my advice is to spell out unequivocally the terms of the giving. Accordingly, don’t get roped into giving her 12 partridges in a pear tree for 12 straight days, or five gold rings for eight days. Well, you get the picture.

But wait: There’s more.

If the lovesick man were to deliver a series of fresh gifts all 12 days, the total would be 364 gifts. I got that total from Phaedra Wouters, our Belgian exchange student who began the entire discussion by asking if the man presented gifts daily.

Phaedra helped me compute that there’ll be 12 partridges, 22 turtle-doves, 30 French hens, 36 calling birds, 40 gold rings, 42 geese-a-laying, 42 swans-a-swimming, 40 maids-a-milking, 36 ladies dancing, 30 lords-a-leaping, 22 pipers piping and 12 drummers drumming.

If you’re planning this kind of spree, i.e., a daily delivery, prepare to shell out around $34,000. You need to realize that even tiny turtledoves underwent 11.5 percent inflation this year.

A Business Insider article by Akin Oyedele provided the $34,000 estimate.

Birds can be messy, geese even more so, so try to budget some money for mops, sponges, soap and disinfectants.

• • •

One season I provided a list of alternate terms for Christmas hymns and carols. This year, I came across an item in Games Magazine by Craig McNair, who modified common expressions in a way that is bound to stump some readers.

Give them a try, and if you wish, email your responses to either of the addresses at the end of this column. I would like to publish the entries and names of those with correct or otherwise clever answers.

  1. Embryonic poultry tallies are inadvisable.
  2. Plasmic density exceeds that of H2O
  3. A dyad is mandatory for Latin dancing
  4. Existence equals nutritional sustenance.
  5. A man who defends himself in court is expeditiously relieved of his wherewithal.
  6. In the event that the footwear properly conforms to the foot, don said footwear.
  7. Directing equine aquatic discovery is feasible, but forced consumption is unattainable.
  8. Do not disturb dormant domestic companions.
  9. Desist vessel agitation.
  10. Conclusions by genteel menfolk are invariably ultimate.

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