The Story Behind the 12 Days of Christmas
The 12 Days of Christmas always seemed like a silly song that went on forever. Really, who would give anyone 6 geese or 7 swans and what would you do with them? Even more strange would be 11 pipers (let’s hope they weren’t bagpipers) and 12 drummers (is that where the Little Drummer Boy came from?).
There are as many versions of this song as there are countries/cultures with the gifts being something more in tune with items that are deemed valuable to the locale.
It has been said that this song was more of a children’s memory game than anything else with each consecutive day/gift having to be recited with all the previous gifts.
The first day of Christmas is December 25th and the final day is January 5th. Thus, for hundreds of years the Christmas holidays didn’t begin until Christmas Eve and didn’t end until Epiphany.
The ninth day of Christmas (January 2) traditionally is nine ladies dancing, but there have been many other versions in recent years. For example: another Sesame Street version is with the Big Bird receiving nine bird-seed cookies.