Editor's note: We'll be taking a few days off for the holidays, so Today Explained will  arrive with a little less frequency over the course of the next week. We'll be back to the daily grind in the new year. Happy holidays, and see you soon!

Nadezhda Ivanova

Though many of us have heard the song "The 12 Days of Christmas," did you know that it doesn’t actually refer to the 12 days leading up to the holiday? In Christian theology, the period kicks off on December 25 and marks the span between the birth of Christ and the coming of the three wise men on January 6.

As for the annoying holiday anthem, it may share a name with that time span, but it  doesn't have a connection to religion at all. 

Confused yet?

Former Vox standards editor Tanya Pai chronicled the story of "The 12 Days of Christmas" — the song, that is — a few years ago. Today, with just a couple of days left before Christmas, we're looking back on her piece explaining the carol, its murky origins, and its evolution over the years.  

—Lavanya Ramanathan, editor, Today Explained

The earliest known version of The 12 Days of Christmas appeared in a 1780 children’s book called Mirth Without Mischief.  Some historians think the song could be French in origin, but most agree it was designed as a “memory and forfeits” game, in which singers tested their recall of the lyrics and had to award their opponents a “forfeit” — a kiss or a favor of some kind — if they made a mistake.

The version most people 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-old rings.”

The carol begins with this verse:

On the first day of Christmas,
my true love gave to me
a partridge in a pear tree.

The song then adds a gift for each day, building on the verse before it, until you’re reciting all 12 gifts together. The gifts are:

Day 2: two turtle doves
Day 3: three French hens
Day 4: four calling birds
Day 5: five gold rings
Day 6: six geese a-laying
Day 7: seven swans a-swimming
Day 8: eight maids a-milking
Day 9: nine ladies dancing
Day 10: 10 lords a-leaping
Day 11: 11 pipers piping
Day 12: 12 drummers drumming

Still, there have been many variations of the lyrics at different points. Some mention “bears a-baiting” or “ships a-sailing”; some name the singer’s mother as the gift giver instead of a true love. Early versions list four “colly” birds, an archaic term meaning black as coal (blackbirds, in other words). And some people theorize that the five gold rings actually refer to the markings of a ring-necked pheasant, which would align with the bird motif of the early verses.

A popular theory is that the lyrics to “The 12 Days of Christmas” are coded references to Christianity, and that it was written to help Christians learn and pass on the tenets of their faith while avoiding persecution in 1600s and 1700s England. 

The myth-debunking website Snopes explained how a lyric about turtle doves could be a veiled reference to, say, the Old and New Testaments, or how “five golden rings” may be a nod to the first five books of the Old Testament. In this reading, the partridge in the pear tree, naturally, represents Jesus Christ.

This theory actually makes little sense once you examine it. Snopes has a great explanation of the many, many holes in its logic. The late historian William Studwell, known for his Christmas carol expertise, also refuted the coded message idea. As he told the Religion News Service in 2008: “It has no depth in it at all. Every religious song, every religious carol has at least depth in it, something that has some spirituality in it. This is frothy, light and frothy.”

Sorry to spoil your dinner party fun fact; while we're at it, we might as well tell you “Ring Around the Rosie” isn’t about the Black Plague, either.

To calculate the cost of all the gifts in "The 12 Days of Christmas," Tanya turned to the PNC financial services group’s annual Christmas Price Index, which PNC has been putting out since 1984; it calculates the cost of all the gifts in the song based on current market rates.

Given the current pace of inflation, this smorgasbord of gift-giving is extra-costly: The total for 2024 comes to a $49,263.47, up from $45,523.27 in 2022, meaning that those five golden rings really are investment pieces. 

The structure of "The 12 Days of Christmas" lends itself easily to parodies, of which there have been many. There’s Jeff Foxworthy’s redneck version, Twisted Sister’s heavy metal take, and, of course, a Muppets version (featuring John Denver). 

Others have attempted to interpret "The 12 Days of Christmas" via food, with dishes like deviled eggs representing geese a-laying and so on. Then there’s the “12 Days of Christmas" diet, which the Atlantic’s Olga Khazan explored in 2013. She calculated the calories in a serving of each bird mentioned in the song and offset them with the calories burned by the various activities (milking, leaping, etc.).

“If you ate all of the birds in one day, including the pheasant pie, but not including all the trimmings for the other dishes, and subtracted the energy you expended milking, dancing, leaping, and drumming, you’d have consumed 2,384 net calories,” she wrote. “That’s really not bad, considering the average American Thanksgiving dinner adds up to about 4,500 calories.”

And if you wanted to burn off that meal by just singing its namesake tune?  You’d have to sing "The 12 Days of Christmas" roughly 300 times — about 17.5 hours of caroling.

Andrew Harnik/Getty Images

What the government shutdown chaos reveals: President-elect Donald Trump, along with his ally, Tesla CEO Elon Musk, upended a bipartisan spending deal last week, days before funding was set to expire. Trump called for Republicans to negotiate a new agreement, and while GOP leaders tried to do so with a new bill, it didn’t pass, leaving lawmakers scrambling in the shadow of the deadline. It’s a preview of what’s to come in the next administration.

It’s surprisingly hard to spend $370 billion: The 2022 Inflation Reduction Act is the largest piece of legislation in US history to address climate change. While it created hundreds of thousands of new jobs, much of the money remains unspent —  and as President Joe Biden tries to spend it all, President-elect Donald Trump wants to stop him.

Should Democrats pivot on immigration? There is growing consensus that the party veered too far left on immigration from 2016 through 2023 and was one factor that cost Kamala Harris the election. Our writer argues a hardline approach isn’t the answer and that Dems should find a middle ground that highlights the proven benefits of immigration. 

Twelve small ways to improve your life in the new year:  We’ve rounded up the best advice we got in 2024 from professors, authors, therapists, researchers, dating coaches, and more. Here’s a cheat sheet to a happy, healthy 2025.

Speaking of improvements: 2024 was filled with technological innovations that made the world a better place. Progress in renewable energy products, artificial intelligence, space, and software made a big impact. Here are five breakthroughs that changed our lives for the better this year (plus, one disappointing release that didn’t.)

The search for MH370 continues: Malaysia is resuming the search for the wreckage of the missing plane Malaysia Airlines Flight 370, a Boeing 777 that carried 227 passengers and 12 crew members and mysteriously vanished in 2014. It says it owes it to victims’ families to provide closure. [CNN]

Big Lots is going out of business: The discount retail chain, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in September, has announced it will close all its remaining stores. [Fast Company]

Howard Schnapp/Newsday RM via Getty Images

President-elect Donald Trump on a possible ceasefire and hostage deal in Gaza. Trump is pushing Hamas to free Israeli hostages by the time he takes office on January 20, but the exact nature of the conditions necessary for this to happen remain murky. Here’s how he could try to take credit for a deal if it emerges by Inauguration Day.

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Today’s edition was produced and edited by senior editor Lavanya Ramanathan, with contributions from staff editor Melinda Fakuade. We'll see you on Wednesday! 

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