We are in the midst of the Twelve Days of Christmas. It is still the Christmas Season and will be until Epiphany, 6 January. Epiphany, the day the three wise men arrived in Bethlehem for Jesus’ birth, is also known as Twelfth Night, Day of the Magi, Three King’s Day, or Eid al-Ghitas. I had never heard of that last name before.
For me, the Twelve Days of Christmas is a good thing. It is a breather after Christmas and a time to enjoy our Christmas decorations a little longer. I put up artificial trees, so I don’t have to worry about a dry evergreen tree dropping needles. Some consider it bad luck to take down the Christmas tree before Epiphany. That is not a problem here.
At home, growing up, we left our decorations up until New Years Day. We usually had some family gatherings the week between Christmas and New Years Day. My Schumm side of the family, grandparents, aunts and uncles, and cousins, had their Christmas dinner that week, so we kept the decorations up for that.
Christmas at Cornelius & Hilda Schumm home, c1963.
Since it is totally acceptable to leave the Christmas finery out until Epiphany, I don’t rush to take down my decorations. Actually, some Christmas decorations may still be out on display in our basement for weeks after Epiphany. I change out the basement decor for the season, but I have scaled back to just three seasons, Patriotic, Halloween, and Christmas. That works very well and is minimal work. My Patriotic Season doesn’t begin until May so I still have plenty of time to put the Christmas decorations away down there.
At any rate, during each Christmas Season I enjoy the song, The Twelve Days of Christmas. It is a centuries-old song that is still popular today. The original song may have had French origins, but first appeared in print in an English children’s book in 1780. The gifts in the song are partridges, turtle doves, French hens, calling birds, golden rings, geese, swans, maids, ladies, lords, pipers, and drummers. Originally, the four calling birds were called colly birds, colly being old English slang for a blackbird, and the partridge in a pear tree was originally a peacock. Today’s version of the lyrics was created in 1909.
The Twelve Days of Christmas music
A question at Christmas party this year was how many gifts would you receive if you got all the gifts in the song. The answer takes a little more calculating than you think at first. The gifts are cumulative. You give each previous gift with each subsequent gift. That is, on each new day, you receive all the gifts previously given. That would be 12 partridges, 22 turtle doves, 30 French hens, etc, making the total number of gifts 364. Interesting that the number is one gift shy of a gift a day for a whole year. Of the 364 gifts, 184 are birds. Someone liked our feathered friends.
I did not figure all this out myself. The answer to almost everything is online and I do not like to think that hard for fun anymore. And for the mathematicians out there, the solution to the question involves Triangular and Tetrahedral Numbers and Triangular-based Pyramids. I’m not sure what all that even means.
What would all those gifts cost today? In 2024 the cost would have been $201,973. That cost should not be a surprise, with swans costing $1875 each and gold over $2600 an ounce.
Some believe there is a hidden Christian meaning to the song, used to secretly pass on Christian ideology.
Partridge in a pear tree=Jesus
Two Turtle Doves=Old and New Testaments
Three French Hens=Faith, Hope, and Charity (theological virtues)
Four Calling Birds=the four Gospels and/or the four evangelists
Five Golden Rings=the first five books of the Old Testament
Six Geese a-laying=the six days of creation
Seven Swans A-swimming=the gifts of the Holy Spirit/the seven sacraments
Eight Maids A-milking=the eight beatitudes
Nine Ladies Dancing=the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit
Ten Lords A-leaping=the Ten Commandments
Eleven Pipers Piping=the eleven faithful apostles
Twelve Drummers Drumming=the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle’s Creed
We are on day 10 of the song today, Ten Lords a-leaping, plus all the other gifts from days 1-9. That’s a quite a crowd and a lot of poultry.
It’s a very catchy Christmas song and now I know what those Calling Birds really are.
2 comments
Thank you for this interesting post. I have always liked to wait until January 6 to take down my Christmas tree and now I have even more encouragement to keep my artificial tree on display. It was fun to learn more about the song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”
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Thank you for writing! Here we are on the 8th, my decorations have been taken down, and my house looks bare!