I was looking for a reference to "A partridge in a pair tree", when my search ended up on this article off of the JonathonCrossfieldBlog.com site. I thought it would be nice to know the history of the song. So here ya go, Enjoy!
"On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…"
I'm sure I don’t need to spell out that today, being Christmas Day, is the first of the Twelve Days of Christmas.Of course, these days, most people only consider the twelve days of Christmas when singing the song, but Christmas as a holiday actually extends from December 25th to the feast of the Epiphany on January 5th.
How Many Can You Remember?
The song, ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’ can be traced back as far as the Sixteenth Century, and was first published in a book entitled ‘Mirth without Mischief’ in 1780. But the melody was updated early in the twentieth century by Frederick Austin. In fact, in its earliest form, the song was more of a game. Players would join a circle and each in turn would recite the first verse, “On the first day of Christmas, my true love sent to me, A partridge in a pear tree.”Then each person would recite the second verse, having to remember all the previous presents as they amassed. (“Two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree…”) and so on. If you forgot any of the gifts, you had to perform a forfeit.
The poem memory game itself hasn’t changed much over the Centuries, except that the original ‘four colly birds’ transformed into ‘four calling birds’; colly birds being an archaic term for blackbirds. Occasionally, different versions have appeared that rearrange the last few verses and in America, the opening line is more commonly sung as ‘…my true love gave to me,’ but otherwise the song is unchanged.
A Party Game or a Religious Allegory?
As usual with Christmas traditions, there are those that insist that there is religious significance to the song. In fact, the Christian argument is an urban myth, traced back to a Catholic website in 1995 that has since removed the page. But the story has spread across the internet on pages such as this one, so that many now believe that the song is spiritual in nature.The argument goes that the different gifts signify different Christian concepts, as follows.
Religious symbolism of The Twelve Days of Christmas (The 12 Days of Christmas)
1 True Love refers to God2 Turtle Doves refers to the Old and New Testaments
3 French Hens refers to Faith, Hope and Charity, the Theological Virtues
4 Calling Birds refers to the Four Gospels and/or the Four Evangelists
5 Golden Rings refers to the first Five Books of the Old Testament, the "Pentateuch", which gives the history of man's fall from grace.
6 Geese A-laying refers to the six days of creation
7 Swans A-swimming refers to the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments
8 Maids A-milking refers to the eight beatitudes
9 Ladies Dancing refers to the nine Fruits of the Holy Spirit
10 Lords A-leaping refers to the ten commandments
11 Pipers Piping refers to the eleven faithful apostles
12 Drummers Drumming refers to the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle's Creed
It is easy to see that there is very little to these supposed religious meanings other than numbers. Even then, the original author who decided to create this myth has struggled with finding a suitable correlation for some of the numbers; with no appropriate ‘11’ being obvious in the scriptures, the writer decided to refer to eleven faithful apostles by conveniently skipping Judas out of the traditionally recognised twelve.
There is no deeper significance to the song. It is simply a memory game recited as a poem by children at Christmas time that eventually found its familiar melody approximately one hundred years ago.
