dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

The 12 days of Christmas BEGIN on Christmas and continue to Epiphany, January 6. That's when the tree comes down.

Putting up the tree on Christmas Eve insures it will last through.

Marketing has changed this people…

Few Christmas carols are as much fun to sing as "The 12 Days of Christmas." Each day, the gifts become more elaborate until a menagerie of people, animals, and objects have all been given to one very lucky true love. But there's more to this song than leaping lords and swimming swans. Some people think

The 12 Days of Christmas" is a veiled reference to the 12 days between the holiday itself and the Feast of the Epiphany on Jan. 6. The truth lies somewhere in between.

Historical Roots

Although the precise origins of the "The 12 Days of Christmas" are unclear, the first published version appeared in England in 1780. That first version was printed in a children's book as a rhyme, without music, that scholars say was intended as a memory game. Similar versions have also been found in the folk music traditions of Scotland, France, and the Faroe Islands dating from the same era.

Over the next 100-plus years, several variations of "The 12 Days of Christmas" were published in the U.K. But it wasn't until the early 1900s that musical versions began to appear. The rendition that most people in the U.S. and U.K. sing today, with its drawn-out chorus of "five golden rings," was published in 1909 by British composer Frederic Austin."