The Twelve Dels of Christmas: My Festive Tales from Life and Only Fools

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Featuring different animals discussing or trying to remember the lyrics of the song, it was released on Christmas Day 2005. However, a 20th-century variant has "my true love gave to me"; this wording has become particularly common in North America.

Many early sources suggest that The Twelve Days of Christmas was a "memory-and-forfeits" game, in which participants were required to repeat a verse of poetry recited by the leader. A special Creature Comforts orchestral arrangement of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was made by British animator Nick Park and Aardman Animations. The exact origins and the meaning of the song are unknown, but it is highly probable that it originated from a children's memory and forfeit game.

This is a traditional English singing game but the melody of five gold rings was added by Richard[ sic] Austin whose fine setting (Novello) should be consulted for a fuller accompaniment. John Julius Norwich's 1998 book, The Twelve Days of Christmas (Correspondence), uses the motif of repeating the previous gifts on each subsequent day, to humorous effect. A classic example of a cumulative song, the lyrics detail a series of increasingly numerous gifts given to the speaker by their "true love" on each of the twelve days of Christmas (the twelve days that make up the Christmas season, starting with Christmas Day).

The successive bars of three for the gifts surrounded by bars of four give the song its hallmark "hurried" quality. Assuming the gifts are repeated in full in each round of the song, then a total of 364 items are delivered by the twelfth day. a] However, the 1780 publication includes an illustration that clearly depicts the "five gold rings" as being jewellery. None of the enumerated items would distinguish Catholics from Protestants, and so would hardly need to be secretly encoded.The illustrator Hilary Knight included A Firefly in a Fir Tree in his Christmas Nutshell Library, a boxed set of four miniature holiday-themed books published in 1963. Sherman wrote and performed his version of the classic Christmas carol on a 1963 TV special that was taped well in advance of the holiday. Salmon, writing from Newcastle, claimed in 1855 that the song "[had] been, up to within twenty years, extremely popular as a schoolboy's Christmas chant". According to The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, "Suggestions have been made that the gifts have significance, as representing the food or sport for each month of the year.

Sharp reports that one singer sings "Britten chains", which he interprets as a corruption of " Breton hens". A melody, possibly related to the "traditional" melody on which Austin based his arrangement, was recorded in Providence, Rhode Island in 1870 and published in 1905.

The former is an index of the current costs of one set of each of the gifts given by the True Love to the singer of the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas". McKellar, published an article, "How to Decode the Twelve Days of Christmas", in which he suggested that "The Twelve Days of Christmas" lyrics were intended as a catechism song to help young English Catholics learn their faith, at a time when practising Catholicism was against the law (from 1558 until 1829). The party was usually a mixed gathering of juveniles and adults, mostly relatives, and before supper — that is, before eating mince pies and twelfth cake — this game and the cushion dance were played, and the forfeits consequent upon them always cried.

New Orleans band Benny Grunch and the Bunch perform a "locals-humor take" on the song, titled "The Twelve Yats of Christmas". Edith Fowke recorded a single version sung by Woody Lambe of Toronto, Canada in 1963, [86] whilst Herbert Halpert recorded one version sung by Oscar Hampton and Sabra Bare in Morgantown, North Carolina One interesting version was also recorded in 1962 in Deer, Arkansas, performed by Sara Stone; [87] the recording is available online courtesy of the University of Arkansas.VeggieTales parodied "The Twelve Days of Christmas" under the title "The 8 Polish Foods of Christmas" in the 1996 album A Very Veggie Christmas. Fay McKay, an American musical comedian, is best known for "The Twelve Daze of Christmas", a parody in which the gifts were replaced with various alcoholic drinks, resulting in her performance becoming increasingly inebriated over the course of the song.