If no one has pointed out to you that the twelve days of Christmas start with Christmas Day… welcome to my blog.
The twelve days run to the day before Epiphany, January 5th (occasionally, it’s December 26th - January 6th. Who knows). Twelfth Night marks the official end of Christmas celebrations – but that’s another post. Twelvetide celebrates the nativity of Jesus to the revelation of Jesus as God incarnate. Yeah, it’s super churchy. But the song itself is firmly secular, which I think is kinda fascinating.
“The Twelve Days of Christmas” is a traditional English carol that has been sung to a number of tunes over the years. The version you know stands on a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk tune by composer Frederic Austin. There are a few similar cumulative Christmas songs, including some from Scotland, the Faroe Islands, Sweden and France. We think “The Twelve Days of Christmas” probably originated as a children’s memory game, with people singing it in the round – if you missed the words, you lost a mince pie or twelfth cake.
The earliest known publication of the words comes from 1780 London in an illustrated children’s book, Mirth Without Mischief. The Austin version added “On” to the beginning of each verse, which was a great improvement. The 1780 version has “four colly birds,” which is a regional English expression for “coal-black.” This wording was very confusing for everyone – possibly because it’s a regional word – as many 19th-century publications have tons of variations (including “canary birds” and “Collie dogs.”)
Rumors have always crept about that there are secret religious meanings behind the gifts. In particular, it’s been suggested that it was a Catholic catechism song for a time when being Catholic was against the law. Absolutely no evidence to support this claim has been offered up. The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes points out that the weather on the days of Twelvetide has been viewed as a portent for the coming year, so it’s possible that the gifts offer some wish for each month (as is the case with France’s “Les Douze Mois” – The Twelve Months – also known as “La Perdriole” – The Partridge.)
In 1984, it became a tradition to use “The Twelve Days of Christmas” as a silly economic indicator. PNC carries on the Christmas Price Index. According to their calculations, it would cost $45,523.27 in 2022 to give the gifts mentioned in the song (in 1984, it was $12,623.10. And yet the minimum wage…) PNC’s version assumes that the humans’ services are just rented and that the gifts aren’t cumulative – that is, that you get the gifts only once rather than again on each subsequent day; there are price indices that count thatta way (and which is always how I interpreted the song as a kid.)
This year, everyone has been pointing out that the “true love” gives a lot of freakin’ birds. Assuming that the gifts aren’t cumulative, it’s still 23 birds. Interestingly, while versions of the song over the years sometimes have alternative gifts, the number of birds rarely changed. Occasionally, the first day is “part/a branch of a juniper tree,” but generally? The changes happen more to the days after “five gold/golden rings.” (That said, some have speculated that the five rings may have referred to a variety of pheasant, which would only add birds. Fortunately, the illustrations have tended toward actual rings.) While I would love getting a pear tree and I think French (probably intended more to mean generally “foreign”) hens are adorable, YEAHHHH… that’s a LOT of birds.