Everything Everywhere Daily: History, Science, Geography & More - The 12 Days of Christmas

Episode Date: January 5, 2021

I’m sure all of you have heard the 12 Days of Christmas song. It is the holiday equivalent of 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall, and no one ever sings it to completion because it’s so long. But it does raise the question, what are the 12 days of Christmas? Why are there 12? And why am I doing an episode on this in January well after Christmas is over? Learn the answers to these questions on the episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

I'm sure you have all heard of the 12 Days of Christmas song. It's the holiday equivalent of 99 bottles of beer on the wall, and no one ever sings it to completion because it's so long. But it does raise the question, what are the 12 days of Christmas? Why are there 12? And why am I doing an episode on this in January while after Christmas is over? Learn the answers to these questions on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. What if your perceptions about the past were wrong?

ThruLine is a podcast that takes you back in time, to uncover the parts of the story that may have gone unnoticed. It effectively turned day into night. And how it shaped the world now. Time travel with us every week on the ThuLine podcast from NPR. This episode is sponsored by Audible.com. Today's audiobook recommendation is The Santa Claus Man, the rise and fall of a jazz age con man and the invention of Christmas in New York by Alex Palmer.

Before the charismatic John Duval Guck Jr. came along, letters from New York Children to Santa Claus were destroyed, unopened by the U.S. Post Office. Gluck saw an opportunity and created the Santa Claus Association. The effort delighted the public and for 15 years money and gifts flowed to the only group authorized to enter Santa's mail. The rise and fall of the Santa Claus Association is a caper both heartwarming and hard-boiled, involving stolen art, phony boy scouts, a kidnapping, pursuit by the FBI, a Coney Island bullfight. You can get a free one-month trial to Audible and two free audiobooks

by going to audibletrial.com slash everything everywhere, or by clicking on the link in the show notes. There are a lot of misconceptions about the 12 days of Christmas. That's mainly because we no longer celebrate the 12 days of Christmas, but some of the traditions and the term still lingers in songs. Many people think that the 12 days of Christmas ends on Christmas Day. This is false. Christmas is actually the beginning of the 12 days of Christmas.

The 12 Days of Christmas is a reference to the season which was known as Christmas Tide. Christmas Tide was originally established by the 567 Council of Tours, which if you remember just a few episodes ago was the medieval council that got rid of January 1st as the date of the start of the new year. Christmas Tide was to be a 12-day feast that began on Christmas Day and followed up the 40-day season of Advent, which was a time of fasting. It was sometimes known as 12-tide. Most of us are aware of Christmas and maybe Boxing Day if you live in a Commonwealth country, and of course, New Year's Eve and New Year's Day. But what's so special about the other days? The number of days was set because January 5th is Epiphany Eve.

This is also known as the 12th Night, which, if that name rings a bell, it's because there's a Shakespeare play by the same name. Epiphany, also known as Three Kings Day, is the day which traditionally celebrated when the three kings or the three wise men visited Jesus and the 12 days it took them to make the journey. Epiphany is actually a bigger celebration than Christmas in many countries, such as Spain, and where Orthodox Christianity is prevalent. In the United States, it's all but ignored. The confusion I always had was, I assume, that Epiphany was part of the 12 days of Christmas. No matter how you work the math, if you try to include both Christmas and Epiphany, you get 13 days.

That's because Epiphany is not part of the 12 days. of Christmas, because it's considered a solemn holy day and not a day of feasting, although, as I mentioned, it's actually a big celebration in many countries. Once a 12-day holiday season was set, the rest of the days sort of got retconned with other holy days mostly celebrating saints. Which saints were celebrated would often differ depending on the country. Some of the feast days included the feast of St. Stephen, St. John, St. Thomas Beckett, and St. Basil. In addition to saints, there are also days filling in the gaps for the Feast of the Holy Name, the feast of the Holy Name, the Feast of the Holy Family, and the Feast of the Holy Innocence.

One of the traditions, which is directly tied to the 12 days of Christmas, was the Yule Log. Most people are aware of a thing called a Yule Log, but they don't really know what it's for. The Yule Log was a log that was burned each night of Christmas Tide, and then the last part was burned on the 12th night. The ashes of the log would then be kept in the home for the next year, and often used in the fire for the next year's Yule Log. Nowadays, a U-Log is usually just a log that serves as a candle holder. So, okay, the 12 days of Christmas starts on Christmas, ends on January 5th, and it was mostly a religious celebration. So what's the deal with the song?

The earliest known publication of the song dates back to 1780 in England, although the song itself may have been French in origin. The lyrics to the song, which are sung today, only date back to 1909, however. The standard form, as it consists today, includes a part of the song. in a pear tree, turtle doves, French hens, calling birds, gold rings, geese all lang, swans of swimming, maids and milking, ladies dancing, lords leaping, pipers, piping, and drummers drumming. The lyrics of the song differed radically throughout the 18th and 17th century, and there were often regional variations in what gifts were listed. Instead of a partridge in a pear tree, for example, it was sometimes a sprig of a juniper tree, or a very pretty peacock upon a tree.

Other gifts which used to be listed include Hair's are running, bulls are roaring, men a mowing, Cox are crowing, boys singing, squabs are swimming, ladies spinning, and bells are ringing. The song itself was more of a game than it actually was a song. The challenge was getting to the last line of the song, which is quite frankly still the challenge today. Oftentimes it would be done in a group with everyone taking part in the last line.

Sometimes the challenge was singing the last line in one full breath. There were rumors that the song might have been a covert Catholic song sung in England when the religion was outlawed. However, there's actually little evidence to support this. Every year, the cost of purchasing all of the items in the song is calculated by the company PNC Financial. They have been doing this since 1984. The 2020 cost was $16,168.14, which was a massive 58% drop in price over 2019, mainly due to the pandemic, making the hiring of Lords of Leaping, ladies' dancing, and drummers drumming impossible.

The price of hens, geese, and swans did go up. However, the price of a partridge in a prayer tree stayed steady. Executive producer of Everything Everywhere Daily is James McAlla. The associate producer is Thor Thompson. Remember to leave a five-star review to get your review read on the show. They can be left at Apple Podcasts, Podcast, or wherever you listen to the show. Also, you can help support the show over at patreon.com.

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