Twelve Days of Christmas
The
Twelve Days of Christmas and the associated evenings of those
twelve days (
Twelve-tide), are the festive days from the evening after
Christmas day (
December 25) through
Epiphany on (
January 6). December 26 (
Boxing Day /
St. Stephen's Day) is the first day of Christmas, then December 27 is the second day of Christmas, and so on until January 6 which is the 12th day of Christmas. Christmas day, December 25, is therefore not one of the twelve days of Christmas. The associated evenings of the twelve days begin on the evening before the specified day. Thus, the first-night is December 25–26, and twelfth-night is January 5–6.
"The Twelve Days of Christmas" () is also the title of a popular
English Christmas carol which enumerates a series of grandiose gifts given on each day of the festival.
These are the twelve days beginning on night of Christmas (
December 25) and ending on the day of 6th January as Epiphany begins on (
January 6). In the
Middle Ages this period was one of continuous feasting and merrymaking, which climaxed on
Twelfth Night, the traditional end of the
Christmas season.
During the twelve days of Christmas, traditional roles were often relaxed, masters waited on their servants, men were allowed to dress as women, and women as men. Often a
Lord of Misrule was chosen to lead the Christmas revels. Some of these traditions were adapted from older,
pagan customs, including the
Roman Saturnalia. Some also have an echo in modern day
pantomime where traditionally authority is mocked and the principal male lead is played by a woman, while the leading older female character, or 'Dame' is played by a man.
Some people give
gifts, feast and otherwise celebrate on each of the twelve days rather than just on one day at Christmas.
The date of the song's first performance is not known, though it was used in
European and
Scandinavian traditions as early as the
16th century.
Structure and lyrics
"Twelve Days of Christmas" is a
cumulative song, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses. There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas.
The first verse runs:
On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to meA partridge in a pear tree.The second verse:
On the second day of Christmas, my true love sent to me:
Two turtle doves:
and a partridge in a pear tree.and so on. The last verse is:
On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me:
Twelve drummers drumming, :
eleven pipers piping, :
ten lords a-leaping, :
nine ladies dancing, :
eight maids a-milking, :
seven swans a-swimming,:
six geese a-laying,:
five gold rings;:
four calling birds,:
three French hens,:
two turtle doves:
and a partridge in a pear tree.The
time signature of this song is not constant, unlike most popular music. The introductory lines, such as "On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love sent to me," are made up of two 4/4
bars, while most of the lines naming off gifts receive one 3/4 bar per gift with the exception of "Five golden rings," which receives two 4/4 bars, "Two turtle doves" getting a 4/4 bar with "And a" on its 4th beat and "Partridge in a pear tree" getting an entire 4/4 bar of music. In most versions, a 4/4 bar of music immediately follows "Partridge in a pear tree." "On the" is found in that bar on the 4th (pickup) beat for the next verse.
There are many variations of this song in which the objects are arranged in a different order (for example — twelve lords a-leaping, eleven ladies dancing, ten pipers piping, nine drummers drumming). There are also many parodies of this song, or modernized versions.
One way to interpret the lyrics of this song is that on each new day, all the gifts are given. This makes the total number of gifts given (counting 12 partridges, 22 turtle doves...) is 364, one fewer than the number of days in a year. There are 376 gifts if you count the pear tree as a separate gift from the partidge that resides in it. Of the 364 total items, 184 of them are birds.
Symbolic interpretation
Some
Christians arbitrarily assign symbolism to the gifts in the song. One of the most common versions of these assigned meanings is:
* The 'partridge in a pear tree' is
Jesus (see
Luke 13:34)
* The 'two turtle doves' are the
Old and
New Testaments
* The 'three French hens' are the three
virtues, faith, hope, and love, or, alternatively, a symbol of the holy
Trinity.
* The 'four calling birds' are the
Evangelists:
Matthew,
Mark,
Luke, and
John; or their
Gospels* 'Five gold rings' are the first five books of the
Bible, or the
Pentateuch* 'Six geese a-laying' refer to the six days of
the Creation* 'Seven swans a-swimming' are the seven
gifts of the
Holy Spirit* 'Eight maids a-milking' are the eight
Beatitudes* 'Nine ladies dancing' are the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit
* 'Ten lords a-leaping' are the
Ten Commandments* 'Eleven pipers piping' are the eleven faithful
Apostles* 'Twelve drummers drumming' are the twelve
doctrines in the
Apostles' CreedThis interpretation is usually taught with a story that
English Catholics, suffering persecution in the
16th century, wrote the song with these hidden meanings.
However, this ignores the fact that 16th century English Catholics were being persecuted by people who were also Christians, and none of the doctrines supposedly taught by the song were points of controversy. The
urban legend debunking site
Snopes.com argues that "[t]here is no substantive evidence to demonstrate that the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was created or used as a secret means of preserving tenets of the Catholic faith, or that this claim is anything but a fanciful modern day speculation..."
Standard variations
Sometimes "gave to me" is used instead of "sent to me"; also "five golden rings" is sometimes "five gold rings". Some argue that "gold" is correct and that "golden" is not. But because "gold" requires stretching into two syllables, the word "golden" seems to fit better. Additionally, some interpreters of the song argue that the five rings refer to coloring around the neck of birds such as pheasants, not jewelry.
The line
four calling birds is an
Americanization of the traditional English wording
four colly birds, and in some places, such as Australia, the variation
calling is supplanting the original. Colly is a dialect word meaning
black and refers to the
European
blackbird Turdus merula.
The line
four calling birds in some versions is
four coiled birds.
The line
nine ladies dancing in some versions is
nine ladies waiting.
As well, the last four verses are sometimes interchanged, so that one version of the song may have nine pipers, ten drummers, eleven ladies, twelve lords, or any other combination.
Straight versions of
The Twelve Days of Christmas has been covered by many popular modern artists and groups.
Parodies
Many
parodies of the "Twelve Days of Christmas" have been written, perhaps more than for any other Christmas song, as its simple list of gifts encourages imaginative substitutes.
The version performed by the
Canadian comedy team
Bob & Doug McKenzie replaces the first gift with "a beer" then "a beer, in a tree" (awkwardly
metered to match the traditional "a partridge in a pear tree"), substituting the other gifts on the list with other stereotypically Canadian items such as 8
comic books (after complaining about the length of the song they skip to day twelve but talk over the part that lists days 12 through 9), 7 packs of
smokes, 6 packs of
two-four (case of beer with 24 bottles or cans), 5 golden
tuques, 4 pounds of
back bacon, 3
french toasts, 2
turtlenecks, and a
beer in a tree.
In his 1959 satire of the over-commercialization of Christmas, called "Green Chri$tma$",
Stan Freberg invented several short and different variations of the song, including:
*"Five tubeless tires"
*"Four quarts of gin"
*"Three cigars"
*"Two cigarettes"
*"And some hair tonic on a pear tree"In the 11th episode of the first season of the TV show
Scrubs, a parody relates the reasons why doctors try to avoid being on-call on Christmas eve:
*12 beaten children
*11 drive-by shootings
*10 frozen homeless
*9 amputations
*8 burn victims
*7 strangled shoppers
*6 random knifings
*5 suicides
*4 beaten wives
*3 OD's
*2 shattered skulls
*and a drunk who drove into a treeIn the
1960s, comedy songwriter
Allan Sherman composed and sang (along with a choir) the "12 Gifts of Christmas", and although it may seem strange, on the 12th day of Christmas he decided to
exchange the eleven previous gifts:
*"Automatic vegetable slicer that works when you see it on television, but not when you get it home";
*"
Chromium combination
manicure scissors and
cigarette lighter";
*"Pair of teakwood shower clogs";
*"Indoor plastic
birdbath";
*"
pink satin pillow that says '
San Diego' with fringe all around it";
*"Hammered
aluminum nutcracker";
*"Statue of a [naked] lady with a clock where her stomach ought to be";
*"Simulated alligator wallet";
*"Calendar book with the name of my insurance man";
*"Green polka dot pajamas";
*and a "Japanese
transistor radio", a
Nakashuma, the Mark IV model (that's the one that's discontinued), in a leatherette case with holes in it so you can listen right through the case, and a wire with a thing on one end that you can stick in your ear, and a thing on the other end that you can't stick anywhere because it's bent.
The version by
The Muppets with
John Denver is done with the traditional words, but with embellishments, notably by
Miss Piggy, breaking up the "straightness" of the presentation.
Jeff Foxworthy's
"Redneck" version has become the most popular parody version heard on American radio
as of 2004. The gifts include a 12-pack of
Bud, 11
rasslin' tickets, a tin of
Copenhagen, 9 years
probation, 8 table dancers, 7 packs of
Red Man, 6 cans of
SPAM, 5
flannel shirts, 4
big mud tires, 3
shotgun shells, 2
hunting dogs, and some parts to a
Mustang GT. Unlike most other versions of the song, Foxworthy's does not feature the characteristic numerical verses.
Scottish Comedian Bill Barclay recorded a version (sometimes titled "The 12 drinks of Christmas"). Each verse contains a stronger drink, with Bill becoming more and more drunk as the song progresses.
A popular parody in the
United States,
The Twelve Pains of Christmas (performed by
Bob Rivers and his comedy troupe), does away with numbering altogether and instead lists some of the activities that drive Americans crazy during the Christmas season from lighting, to gift-giving, to dealing with family members, even singing carols. Also included are these things: finding a christmas tree, rigging up the lights, hangovers, sending christmas cards, five months of bills, facing my inlaws, charities and others
On the Sesame Street Christmas CD, the gang improvises:
Cookie Monster gets well, a
cookie,
Elmo gets 2 baby frogs, an Anything Girl gets 3 footballs(?),
Grover gets 4 wooly
bears,
Bert gets 5
argyle socks,
Ernie gets 6
rubber ducks,
Oscar gets 7
trashcans,
The Count gets 8 counts, Big Bird gets 9 lbs. of
birdseed, Telly demands 10
triangles, Harry Monster wants 11 broken
buildings and Snuffy can't remember what he got.
Blizzard Entertainment released a free
MP3 for its fans with the voice actors from
StarCraft singing about different items in that
video game.
At
Garfield.com,
Garfield receives a partrige in a pear tree, 2 teddy bears, 3 fruitcakes, 4 jelly rolls, 5 million presents, 6 dogs a-kicking, 7 bunny slippers, 8 plates of pasta, 9 spiders wacking, 10 cups of coffee, 11 hairballs hacking, and 12 mice a-dancing.
The Yobs, a British punk band, sing a perverted version featuring, amongst other obcenities, "5 ####### ######", 2 blow up dolls and a vibrator with a battery.
In a version "The Twelve Days after Christmas," the singer and his true love "had a fight." As a result, the singer spent the song decribing how the gifts were disposed of by giving them away or (for most of the non-human gifts, which were sent back Collect, minus one drummer) killed.
In the
Discworld novel
Hogfather,
Mustrum Ridcully sings what seems to be "The Twelve Days of
Hogswatch", clearly a rather less unilateral song:
"On the second day of Hogswatch I... sent my true love back A nasty little letter, hah, yes, indeed, and a partridge in a pear tree."Cost
As a tongue-in-cheek
economic indicator, each year economists will compute the cost for all the gifts mentioned in the song. For
2005, the survey by PNC Advisors showed a 9.50% increase over
2004. It breaks down to:
*One Partridge in a Pear Tree: $104.99 ($15.00 Partridge, $89.99 Pear Tree)
*Two Turtle Doves: $40.00 ($20.00 each)
*Three French Hens: $45.00 ($15.00 each)
*Four Calling Birds: $399.96 ($99.99 each)
*Five Gold Rings: $325.00 ($65.00 each)
*Six Geese-a-Laying: $300.00 ($50.00 each)
*Seven Swans-a-Swimming: $4,200.00 ($600.00 each)
*Eight Maids-a-Milking: $41.20 ($5.15 each)
*Nine Ladies Dancing: $4,576.14 ($508.46 each)
*10 Lords-a-Leaping: $4,039.08 ($403.91 each)
*11 Pipers Piping: $2,053.20 ($186.66 each)
*12 Drummers Drumming: $2,224.30 ($185.36 each)
Total Christmas Price Index: $18,348.87
"Core" index, excluding swans: $14,148.87
True cost of Christmas in song: $72,608.02 (including 364 total gifts)
* See especially the subhead
Popular Merrymaking under
Liturgy and Custom.
*
*
An example of the symbolic interpretation and the related story at
The Christian Resource Institute*
The Twelve Holy Days from
New Age Bible Interpretation, Vol. VII Mystery of the Christos by
Corinne Heline.
*
An examination of the secret meaning story at
Snopes.com*
The Twelve Days Of Christmas (Full Song)
