The 12 Days of Christmas: The story behind the holiday’s most annoying carol

Editor’s note, December 25, 8 am ET : This story is being republished for the holiday season. It was originally published in 2020. The 12 Days of Christmas: The story behind the holiday’s most annoying carol A few things you may not know about the song - and the actual 12 days of Christmas. Tanya Pai headed the standards team at Vox, focusing on copy editing, fact-checking, inclusive language and sourcing, and newsroom standards and ethics issues. She’s also a founder of , a free resource for journalists and storytellers focused on thoughtful language use. Language, Please It might seem unbelievable given that the “Christmas creep” now begins before Halloween, but the true Christmas season actually starts on Christmas Day itself. That’s right: December 25 marks the official start of the 12 days of Christmas, the Christian tradition that shares its name with a relentlessly stick-in-your-head Christmas carol. Here are a few things you may not know about the song and the season. What are the 12 days of Christmas? The 12 days of Christmas is the period in Christian theology that marks the span between the birth of Christ and the coming of the Magi, the three wise men. It begins on December 25 (Christmas) and runs through January 6 (the Epiphany, sometimes also called Three Kings’ Day). The four weeks preceding Christmas are collectively known as Advent , which begins four Sundays before Christmas and ends on December 24. Some families choose to mark the 12-day period by observing the feast days of various saints (including St. Stephen on December 26) and planning daily Christmas-related activities, but for many, things go back to business as usual after December 25. “The 12 Days of Christmas” is also a Christmas carol in which the singer brags about all the cool gifts they received from their “true love” during the 12 days of Christmas. Each verse builds on the previous one, serving as a really effective way to annoy family members on road trips. The lyrics to “The 12 Days of Christmas” have changed over the years The version most people are familiar with today begins with this verse: On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me a partridge in a pear tree. The song then adds a gift for each day, building on the verse before it, until you’re reciting all 12 gifts together: Day 2: two turtle doves Day 3: three French hens Day 4: four calling birds Day 5: five gold rings Day 6: six geese a-laying Day 7: seven swans a-swimming Day 8: eight maids a-milking Day 9: nine ladies dancing Day 10: 10 lords a-leaping Day 11: 11 pipers piping Day 12: 12 drummers drumming The history of the carol is somewhat murky. The earliest known version first appeared in a 1780 children’s book called Mirth With-out Mischief . (A first edition of that book sold for $23,750 at a Sotheby’s auction in 2014, but you can also buy a digital copy...

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