Twelve Days of Christmas starts here!

Twelve Days of Christmas starts here!

Twelve Days of Christmas. December 25 marks the official start of the Twelve Days of Christmas.
The Christian tradition that shares its name with a relentlessly stick-in-your-head Christmas carol.

On the first day of Christmas, my truelove sent to me…
…A Partridge in a Pear Tree

The Twelve Days of Christmas, is the period in Christian theology that marks the days between the birth of Christ and the coming of the Magi, the three wise men.

It begins on December 25. Christmas Day and runs through January 6, the Epiphany, sometimes also called Three Kings’ Day or Twelth Night.

The history of the Twelve Days of Christmas carol is somewhat murky. The earliest known version first appeared in a 1780 children’s book called Mirth With-out Mischief.

The song most of us are familiar with today comes from an English composer named Frederic Austin. In 1909, he set the melody and lyrics (including changing “colly” to “calling”) and added as his own flourish the drawn-out cadence of “five go-oldrings.”

The musical structure, is a an impressive example of how repetition in music best succeeds when accompanied by variation. Hence you have moments like when the time-signature changes for “five golden rings.” This makes the song as fun as it is to sing.