I Am Bad With Carols

tkingfisher:

You know, seen from a certain point of view, “Do You Hear What I Hear?” is a song about a really weird game of Telephone.

The Night Wind tells the Little Lamb about a star.

The
Little Lamb, understandably freaked out by the fact that the sky is
talking, runs to the Shepherd Boy going “The sky is talking! It’s got a
big voice!” (and, based on what I know of sheep, probably also “Will it
eat me?!” and “Can I eat it?”)

And then it goes off the rails.
The Shepherd Boy stomps off to tell the Mighty King (and how well
connected is this kid, anyhow? He just shows up at the palace, waves to
the guards, walks on in) that there’s a child shivering in the cold and
we should bring him silver and gold (We? Does this kid have silver and gold on hand, too? Which…might explain the ease of getting an audience, actually…)

At
no point does the Shepherd Boy mention that his source of information
is a possibly delusional sheep, which, okay, I might not bring that up
to begin with, either. But how does the Shepherd Boy know any of this?
The Lamb is still back in the field babbling about a voice in the sky
talking about stars. Where did the child come from? Did the Shepherd Boy
make a detour and find all this out? Why even bring the Lamb into it,
in that case? And why is the Mighty King going “Whoa! One of my peasants
just waltzed in to tell me about a disadvantaged child? THIS MEANS
PEACE AND LIGHT!”

Honestly, if you’re that easily impressed, you
have to figure that a new faith gets founded in the kingdom practically
daily. “Your Majesty, the washerwoman’s here and she says there’s a fish
in the stream with a–” “ALL HAIL DAGON!”

Look, I know it’s a
Christmas carol, I am just saying that the narrative does not follow
logically from the Night Wind talking about stars to the King informing
the populace that there’s a new religion in town. There are some gaps.

…yes, I am also really, really annoying to sit next to at movies.