I have one more Christmas song for you. As a child, I listened to the Muppet Christmas tape til it wore out. My mother must have been so sick of the Muppets. Of course, since we had no television, it's only now as I've been hunting for this song on youtube that I realize it was actually a TV special w/ John Denver. What a flashback watching him in these clips.
Christmas is coming
the goose is getting fat
please to put a penny
in the old man's hat
if you haven't got a penny
a ha'penny will do
if you haven't got a ha'penny
then God bless you
Way back when, even before Jane Austen's day but she would have dealt with this system also, the English monetary system was incredibly confusing. There were sovereigns and crowns and pounds and pennies and ha'pennies (half pennies, though what the point of cutting a penny in half is I have absolutely no idea) and all of them were a different monetary value. This song demonstrates the poverty of the time for certain people, as you are requested to put a penny in an old man's (presumably a beggar) hat, and if you don't even have that, then bless you.
This is the Muppets' version. God bless Miss Piggy.
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