There are twelve verses, each describing a gift given by "my true love" on one of the twelve days of Christmas.

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. The song has been recorded by the Muppets five different times, featuring different Muppets in different roles each time. A Māori / New Zealand version, titled "A Pukeko in a Ponga Tree", written by Kingi Matutaera Ihaka, appeared as a picture book and cassette recording in 1981. Despite this, other theories about the word's origin are also found in the literature, such as that the word is a corruption of French collet ("ruff"), or of "coloured".However, a 20th-century variant has "my true love gave to me"; this wording has become particularly common in North America. This wording must have been opaque to many even in the 19th century: " canary birds", "colour'd birds", "curley birds", and "corley birds" are found in its place. William and Ceil Baring-Gould reiterate this idea, which implies that the gifts for first seven days are all birds. Some variants have " juniper tree" or " June apple tree" rather than "pear tree", presumably a mishearing of "partri dge in a pear tree". A lady begins it, generally an elderly lady, singing the first line in a high clear voice, the person sitting next takes up the second, the third follows, at first gently, but before twelfth day is reached the whole circle were joining in with stentorian noise and wonderful enjoyment.

Before the fifth verse (when "Five gold rings" is first sung), the melody, using solfege, is "sol re mi fa re" for the fourth to second items, and this same melody is thereafter sung for the twelfth to sixth items. Les Douze Mois" ("The Twelve Months") (also known as "La Perdriole"—"The Partridge") [36] is another similar cumulative verse from France that has been likened to The Twelve Days of Christmas.a] However, the 1780 publication includes an illustration that clearly depicts the "five gold rings" as being jewellery. 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). VeggieTales parodied "The Twelve Days of Christmas" under the title "The 8 Polish Foods of Christmas" in the 1996 album A Very Veggie Christmas.

This was also suggested by Anne Gilchrist, who observed in 1916 that "from the constancy in English, French, and Languedoc versions of the 'merry little partridge,' I suspect that 'pear-tree' is really perdrix (Old French pertriz) carried into England". The index has been humorously criticised for not accurately reflecting the true cost of the gifts featured in the Christmas carol. Some authors suggest a connection to a religious verse entitled "Twelfth Day", found in a thirteenth century manuscript at Trinity College, Cambridge; [47] [48] [49] this theory is criticised as "erroneous" by Yoffie. Members of the Navy Sea Chanters sing their comedy version of "The Twelve Days of Christmas" on 4 December 2009, at the Wallace Theater, Ft. 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.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. The 1780 version has "four colly birds"— colly being a regional English expression for "coal-black" (the name of the collie dog breed may come from this word).

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 similar cumulative verse from Scotland, "The Yule Days", has been likened to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in the scholarly literature. A number of later publications state that Austin's music for "five gold rings" is an original addition to an otherwise traditional melody.It is probably a corruption of "partridge in a pear tree", though Gilchrist suggests "juniper tree" could have been joli perdrix, [pretty partridge]. Husk, in the 1864 excerpt quoted below, stated that the carol was "found on broadsides printed at Newcastle at various periods during the last hundred and fifty years", i. Jasper Carrott performed "Twelve Drinks of Christmas" where he appears to be more inebriated with each successive verse. 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".