I wrote this one a few years back, when a friend of mine who was giving a Christmas party asked me to come up with some party games. Here are the titles of fifteen familiar Christmas carols, which have been obfuscated with a plethora of highfalutin language. See if you can decipher them.
1. Palestinian municipality of unimpressive size
2. Seraphic beings originating from a celestial location
3. I espied a trio of sea-going vessels
4. Somewhere sort of far off, in a feedbox
5. Spruce up the gathering place with bunches of seasonal greenery
6. Depart, and proclaim the news from an elevated location
7. May the Supreme Deity maintain you in a state of jollity, fellas
8. It took place at 12:00 under a very starry sky
9. Unbounded happiness to the inhabitants of this planet
10. Complete absence of nocturnal noise
11. I speculate in astonishment, even as I perambulate aimlessly
12. On a particular occasion in a certain village associated with a prominent Hebrew monarch
13. The time from December 25 to January 6
14. Seasonal musical composition for hollow metal objects, typically having the shape of an inverted cup widening at the lip, that sound a clear musical note when struck, typically by means of a clapper inside
15. Seasonal musical composition for percussion instruments, typically cylindrical, barrel-shaped, or bowl-shaped, with a taut membrane over one or both ends, sounded by being struck with hands, sticks, or mallets
❆ ❆ ❆ ❆ ❆
ANSWERS: 1. O Little Town of Bethlehem; 2. Angels from the Realms of Glory; 3. I Saw Three Ships; 4. Away in a Manger; 5. Deck the Hall with Boughs of Holly; 6. Go, Tell It on the Mountain; 7. God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen; 8. It Came Upon a Midnight Clear; 9. Joy to the World; 10. Silent Night; 11. I Wonder as I Wander; 12. Once in Royal David’s City; 13. The Twelve Days of Christmas; 14. Carol of the Bells; 15. Carol of the Drums
SCORING
12 – 15 correct: Pretty good, but don’t get a big head; it was an easy quiz
8 – 11 correct: You need to go Christmas caroling more often
4 – 7 correct: I suspect you just don’t like music
fewer than 4 correct: Is your name Ebenezer?
Feel free to post your score in the comment section below, assuming it’s something you’re proud of.
A tangent: Back in the Dark Ages, when I took Latin in high school, we learned the Latin version of a few carols. One of them was “Tinniat, tintinnabulum” (“Jingle Bells”). That one and several others can be found here: http://www.empire.net/~bholt/latin_carols.txt
Ha! My Latin teacher never did fun stuff like that. I did, however, learn the Latin for “Twinkle, twinkle, little star” from my mother when I was a kid, and for some reason I remembered it many years later, when an elderly gentleman asked a roomful of people if anyone knew what “Mica, mica, parva stella” meant. He, of course, had grown up in the days when everyone studied Latin in high school, and he was confident that none of us young upstarts would know the answer. The look on his face when I translated it for him was priceless.