On December Five and Twenty....

When I was in the fourth grade, I was still living in Suburbia. At Christmas time, the choir had a big concert with all the older grades combined to sing wonderful Christmas songs from other countries as well as America.

This particular music teacher that year was new. I think she was trying to impress everyone with the quality and quantity of the Christmas program, because many of us were taken out of our regular classrooms to assemble in the gym that doubled as our lunchroom to practice for the program.

We began to work on a last minute song from Spain, I think. It was called “Fum Fum Fum.” It was a catchy tune and we caught on to it easily enough, but the teacher wanted us to enunciate the “Fum Fum Fum” properly.

She began to slowly enunciate for us. She emphasized the “m” sound. I guess we sounded like we were contemptuous of “December five and twenty.” Foo Foo Foo!

While she was enunciating for us, you could almost see literal question marks hanging over our heads. We kids looked at each other. Boy, we’ve been pronouncing it wrong.

So our music teacher said, “Let’s try it from the beginning.”

And we sang, “On December five and twenty, Foomah Foomah Foomah!”

The teacher threw down her baton and took a break.