Stuffed with leftover turkey from every glutton’s favorite holiday, I reflect upon the chaos that is the holiday season.

Everyone will scurry about the malls and retail stores. Commonwealth Edison will rejoice as millions of people put up holiday decorations. And when I go home at the end of the semester, I can count on my mom to blast holiday music throughout the house.

What says holiday cheer more than a gleeful carol? Choirs rejoicing in harmonic unity warming everyone’s hearts.

One particular song is in my head. A Christmas classic. The Twelve Days of Christmas. Only I have taken it upon myself to take a few liberties with the lyrics. So without further ado, I present to you the Eastern athletics’ version of the The Twelve Days of Christmas.

Please forgive any problems with pace and rhyme schemes. If I was smarter, I might be able to sort out those details, but you have to make do with what you have.

On the 12th Day of Christmas Rich McDuffie gave to me — I promise you this will be the only line that matches the rhyme scheme of the actual song, any other lines matching the real song are purely coincidental.

12 drummers drumming — OK, so I stole this one from the real song, but the rest will be good. I promise. I just wanted to point out Eastern’s band, whose practice field is shrinking to make room for more parking and more construction.

An $11,000 salary raise — That’s enough money to deck the halls in the McDuffie household to make people go tell it on the mountain (Oh, I kill myself with stupid puns).

10 Panthers jumping — Instead of lords a leaping, we get Henry Domercant and Pam O’Connor leading the way for Eastern basketball.

Nine Pink Panthers dancin’ – Well, this just fits because in the song it’s nine ladies dancing — I’m so clever.

Eight Jan Thompson picks — He might not put up a lot of points on the board and picturing him diving after a Florida player to stop a fast break still makes me laugh, but Henry Domercant says Jan would set a pick on his own mother.

Seven Panthers swimming — Eastern’s swim teams are off to a strong start. The men’s team is 3-2-1 and took first place at the Panther Invitational. The women’s squad is 4-2 and also took first in the Panther Invitational.

Six Panther turnovers — In the last two weeks of the season, Eastern’s football team literally gave its opponents the ball, losing both games.

Number five jersey — With the departure of Tony Romo and J.R. Taylor, No. 5

Andre Raymond will bring the only experience to the backfield next season for the Panthers football team.

Four more points — The amount Domercant needs to become Eastern’s all-time leading scorer. With the Panthers playing Western Illinois tonight at Lantz, I doubt it will take Oh’ Henry long to get those four points after scoring 40 against Evansville Saturday.

Three-point shots — With excellent perimeter shooters on both the men’s and women’s basketball teams, the long shots are going to fly this season in Lantz Arena.

Two OVC rings — Congrats to the women’s soccer team for winning back-to-back OVC-Tournament championships.

And one mascot on some fake grass — Well we don’t have a name for the mascot yet, and the artificial turf at O’Brien is still just a dream, but we all know what McDuffie has on his wish list.