Why, hello everybody. It is Monday, day 10 of the 12 days of Christmas. I'm Mimi Fotz, and this is Hello From the Van. Today's episode is about eight minutes long. Plan accordingly. My goodness, can you believe that we are to day 10 already? I've decided that for today we are going to discuss what are the 12 days of Christmas? Where did this come from and why are we even doing it? The 12 Days of Christmas is an old English Christmas carol, so you know the one. On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me. Where did that come from? Well, that's what we're going to talk about today. It all began in the late 1800s, around the same time that a lot of Christmas traditions that we celebrate became solidified in human culture. That's where we got the Twelve Days of Christmas. The melody that we sing for the Twelve Days of Christmas actually didn't come about until 1909 and was done as a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederick Austin. Before Austin wrote everything down, each area of the country had their own version of the song. It was regional, and the words were used as a memory game. Also of note was that before Austin wrote everything down, this game or this song was used after Christmas rather than before. It was used as a way to extend the holiday season. So rather than starting in mid-December and using it as a build-up to a great big holiday and Christmas Eve, so the first day of Christmas would be on Christmas Day. And it was done for the twelve days after Christmas to help extend the Christmas season. Historians are not quite sure at what point exactly people started singing the twelve days of Christmas before Christmas rather than after. However, many of them believe that it came about with Austin's 1909 version of the song. Now you're probably wondering, the 12 Days of Christmas wasn't around before the late 1800s? Oh, but it was. The earliest known publication of the words to the 12 Days of Christmas were in an illustrated children's book, Mirth Without Mischief, published in London, England in 1780. This is a very old Christmas carol. It is nearly 250 years old. And with an age like that, there are bound to be some changes that have happened over the history of the song. We're gonna go over those really quickly. In early versions, at the beginning of each verse, the word on was skipped. For example, instead of saying on the twelfth day of Christmas, they would just say the twelfth day of Christmas. Also in earlier versions, it was my true love sent to me. But in the 20th century variant, so in the song that we sing, it's my true love gave to me. This is a particularly American thing. Other places in the world still say my true love sent to me. It's an American thing to say my true love gave to me. And in one variant, the gifts came from my mother rather than my true love. So it would say the twelfth day of Christmas my mother gave to me instead of on the twelfth day of Christmas my true love gave to me. Very different. You're probably wondering about the pear tree. Well, it used to be a juniper tree or a June apple tree rather than a pear tree. And at some point it became partridge in a pear tree. Another very interesting change. In the 1780 version, so the oldest version that we know of, it was for collie birds. Not colling birds, collie birds. C-O-L-L-Y. Collie was a regional English expression. So imagine saying the word collie with a with an English accent. And it meant coal black. There are other versions of the song that say canary birds, colored birds, curly birds, corally birds, and finally calling birds. So there's been a lot of different versions of birds in this one song. If you've ever gotten to the end of the song and you can't remember what comes first, pie pipers or drummers or whatever, it doesn't really matter because the gifts associated with the final four days have been reordered over and over again. For example, the Pipers may be on the ninth day rather than the 11th, depending on which version you read. So if you feel like you got it wrong, did you actually get it wrong or are you just singing a different version? And finally, did you know that Scotland has their own version of the 12 days of Christmas? The Scottish version is called the Yule Days and has a lot of similarities with the 12 days of Christmas. It also has a couple differences. The differences are that it has 13 days rather than 12, and the number of gifts don't increase. They're listed rather than numbered. What are those gifts? Uh there's still maids of milking, there's still dancing, there's still ducks and swans and birds and geese, but there's also an Arabian baboon and a bull that was brown and gold spings. So a lot of overlap, but a lot of very big differences. There are also similar versions in the Faroe Islands, Sweden, and France. While we have records of the 12 days of Christmas all the way back to the 1700s, the exact origins and the meaning of the song are unknown, but it is thought by historians that it came from a children's memory game. So it was just one more way to teach children how to count and how to remember things associated with the season. It was called a memory and forfeit game. Have you ever played Shibuya Roll Call, where you have to, hi, my name is Alan, my wife's name is Alice, and you start with A's and then you go to B's, and if you mess up, then you're out. That's basically what the 12 Days of Christmas was. It started as a game, like Shibuya Roll Call, but then it got put to music and now it's something that we sing. Now you're probably wondering, but wait, how did a game turn into a song? Well, remember how we talked about that writer in 1909 who wrote it down, Frederick Austin? Well, here's what he had to say. He wrote, This song was in my childhood current in my family. I have not yet met with the tune elsewhere, nor with the particular version of the words, and have in this setting recorded both to the best of my recollection. So basically his family had their own version of this game, and they had made up their own little tune to it to help them remember, and he just memorialized it and wrote it down. His family's version of the game is what we sing today. The song has also been used all throughout pop culture over and over and over again in different ways. For example, VeggieTales did a version of the 12 Days of Christmas called The Eight Polish Foods of Christmas. Have you ever heard of Bluey? There's a Bluey board book of the 12 Days of Christmas. It was published in November of 2022 and is based on the character Verandah Santa from season one. There are also The Twelve Disasters of Christmas. The Muppets even did the 12 Days of Christmas with John Denver in 1979. The Chipmunks saying it on Alvin and the Chipmunks. They covered it. There's even a cheesy Hallmark movie called The Twelve Dates of Christmas. Basically, it was a kids' game in the 1700s, and now it's part of our culture and something that we see every single Christmas. And that's the history of the 12 days of Christmas. Hopefully, you enjoyed it and you learned a little bit more today. Tomorrow I will be answering all of your questions. If you have questions that have to do with Christmas, you go ahead and have your parents send those in to me. I will answer as many as I can tomorrow on the podcast. Until then, I'm Mimi Fotz, and this has been Hello from the Van. Oh, and today's sources Christmas Carols, Family Trivia Fun with classic Christmas songs by Deborah Kerbel and Gordon Pape. The Nursery Rhymes of England by James Orchard Hallowell, 1842, Nursery Rhymes with the tunes which they are still sung in the nurseries of England by Edward Rimbault. Worship by Jeffrey A. Truescott, Armor Publishing, But Do You Recall Twenty Five Days of Christmas Carols and the Stories Behind Them by Brian Scott, Wikipedia, and finally Free Scores of the Twelve Days of Christmas in the Choral Public Domain Library.