Gilchrist suggests that the adjective "French" may mean "foreign". [55] Sharp reports that one singer sings "Britten chains", which he interprets as a corruption of " Breton hens". [58] William and Ceil Baring-Gould also suggest that the birds are Breton hens, which they see as another indication that the carol is of French origin. [59] Colly birds [ edit ] Scott (1892), reminiscing about Christmas and New Year's celebrations in Newcastle around the year 1844, described a performance thus: [25] Frank Sinatra and his children, Frank Sinatra Jr., Nancy Sinatra, and Tina Sinatra, included their own version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" on their 1968 album, The Sinatra Family Wish You a Merry Christmas. [96] In the famous article The Complexity of Songs, Donald Knuth computes the space complexity of the song as function of the number of days, observing that a hypothetical "The m {\displaystyle m} Days of Christmas" requires a memory space of O ( n / log ⁡ n ) {\displaystyle O\left({\sqrt {n/\log n}}\right)} as m → ∞ {\displaystyle m\to \infty } where n {\displaystyle n} is the length of the song, showing that songs with complexity lower than O ( n ) {\displaystyle O({\sqrt {n}})} indeed exist. Incidentally, it is also observed that the total number of gifts after m {\displaystyle m} days equals m 3 / 6 + m 2 / 2 + m / 3 {\displaystyle m

Sears put out a special Christmas coloring book with Disney's Winnie-the-Pooh characters in 1973 featuring a version of the carol focusing on Pooh's attempts to get a pot of honey from a hollow honey tree, with each verse ending in "and a hunny pot inna hollow tree". A number of later publications state that Austin's music for "five gold rings" is an original addition to an otherwise traditional melody. An early appearance of this claim is found in the 1961 University Carol Book, which states: [74] [75]In the early versions "my true love sent to me" the gifts. However, a 20th-century variant has "my true love gave to me"; this wording has become particularly common in North America. [7] While the words as published in Mirth without Mischief and the Angus broadsheet were almost identical, subsequent versions (beginning with James Orchard Halliwell's Nursery Rhymes of England of 1842) have displayed considerable variation: [6] Some variants have " juniper tree" or " June apple tree" rather than "pear tree", presumably a mishearing of "partri dge in a pear tree".

Shahn suggests that "the five golden rings refer to the ringed pheasant". [61] William and Ceil Baring-Gould reiterate this idea, which implies that the gifts for first seven days are all birds. [59] Others suggest the gold rings refer to "five goldspinks"—a goldspink being an old name for a goldfinch; [62] or even canaries. [a] However, the 1780 publication includes an illustration that clearly depicts the "five gold rings" as being jewellery. [4] General [ edit ] The Twelve Days of Christmas" is a cumulative song, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses. There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas. Jasper Carrott performed "Twelve Drinks of Christmas" where he appears to be more inebriated with each successive verse. [90] This was based on Scottish comedian Bill Barclay's version. [91] In the earliest versions, the word on is not present at the beginning of each verse—for example, the first verse begins simply "The first day of Christmas". On was added in Austin's 1909 version, and became very popular thereafter.The Twelve Days of Christmas" is an English Christmas carol. 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). [1] [2] The carol, whose words were first published in England in the late eighteenth century, has a Roud Folk Song Index number of 68. A large number of different melodies have been associated with the song, of which the best known is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederic Austin.

In the 12 Disasters of Christmas movie, the song has actually been created by the Mayas to ensure that a prophecy of the end of the world be foretold among europeans even after the destruction of the Mayas' civilization. A radio play written by Brian Sibley, "And Yet Another Partridge in a Pear Tree" was broadcast on BBC Radio 4 on Christmas Day 1977. [98] Starring Penelope Keith, it imagines the increasingly exasperated response of the recipient of the "twelve days" gifts. [99] It was rebroadcast in 2011. [100] Similarly, Iceland has a Christmas tradition where " Yule Lads" put gifts in the shoes of children for each of the 13 nights of Christmas. [ citation needed] Faroe Islands [ edit ] One of the two "Twelve Days of Christmas" Faroe stamps Allan Sherman released two different versions of " The Twelve Gifts of Christmas". [92] 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. Warner Bros. Records rushed out a 45 RPM version in early December. [93] 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. [78]The time signature of this song is not constant, unlike most popular music. This irregular meter perhaps reflects the song's folk origin. The introductory lines "On the [ nth] day of Christmas, my true love gave to me", are made up of two 4 A] cry for forfeits arose. So the party sat down round Mabel on benches brought out from under the table, and Mabel began, --

The Ray Conniff Singers recorded a traditional version in 1962, appearing on the album We Wish You a Merry Christmas.a) differences in wording, ignoring capitalisation and punctuation, are indicated in italics (including permutations, where for example the 10th day of Austin's version becomes the 9th day here);