On the Twelfth Day of Christmas

On a recent rainy morning, I was decorating a particular tree -- the one that represents that great Tree of Life -- and I paused to consider how many presents my true love gave to me.

It's a simple problem, really. One partridge, plus two turtle doves, plus three French hens: It's basically the summation of an arithmetic series and there's a simple formula for it.

That formula is sometimes tied to the great 19th century mathematician Carl Friedrich Gauss. One day when he was a young boy, his school master was feeling particularly cruel and he asked the class to total all the numbers from 1 to 100. So the class set to scribbling, 1+2+3 etc.

But Gauss noticed something. He saw that you can break the one hundred numbers into fifty pairs: 1+100, 2+99 and so on. Basically you have fifty 101s. Fifty times 101 is 5050.

Bingo.

Gauss walked up to the teacher and lay down the sum.

"There it lies," he said.

Class over.

So what's this story really about? It's not so much about math but about tyranny, about an insecure schoolmaster working in a subject that may have far exceeded his reach. In reaction, he bullied those around him.

But by using his powers of thought, Gauss was able to resist.

There are perhaps two ways to vanquish tyranny or the threat there of. The first may be the generosity of Christ, that very thing that we celebrate in the Christmastide; the power to give and love in the face of selfishness and greed.

And if that fails? Well, on the 12th day of Christmas, my true love gave to me 78 presents, the last of which was a Partridge in a Pear Tree.

The Lord on High, in concert with one of his lesser Angels, gave us life and within that life the power to reason. With that gift may joy prevail, and may all manner of tyranny be defeated.

With a Perspective, I'm Andrew Lewis.

Andrew Lewis is an author who lives in Sebastopol, where he works with at-risk youth.