Treading on Thin Snow

Ian learned a most unwholesome corruption of "Jingle Bells" from one of his more avant-garde friends, and he was singing it in the yard today:

"Jingle Bells,
Batman smells,

Robin laid a gun."

When I was a lad in Boston, there was a similar abomination throughout the neighborhood, only with a slight twist; for the Irish-American Bostonians of the 1970's, Robin actually laid an egg. I suppose there was some very deliberate wit to this, since if Robin were a bird, he (if he were "she") might well lay an egg. Moreover, there was some extremely naughty hint at the underworld of humor that deals with flatulence, for in those distant times, "laying an egg" was a reference to something quite unmentionable.

In any case, Daniel confronted Ian for what he regarded as implicit irreverence toward the culture of bells-on-bobtail and Miss Fanny Pride (the co-rider in the song, Jingle Bells):

I don't think that it's very funny, that song about "Jingle Bells, Santa Smells, Robin laid a gun.' It might be joking about Santa, Christmas, and God."

I assured both boys that "Jingle Bells," although we arbitrarily associate it with the Christmas season, has nothing to do with any of the three subjects about which young Daniel was concerned.

(December 24, 2010)