The “Origin” of The Twelve Days of Christmas
I am sure that if you have been using the internet for any length of time you have received in your email inbox some sort of email hoax, prank, or urban legend. The “Origin of the Twelve Days of Christmas” is one of those urban legends that is usually circulated around during the holiday season by well-meaning, but uninformed, Christians and other religious people.
Below is a snippet from the email, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” :
bq.. You’re all familiar with the Christmas song, “The Twelve Days of Christmas” I think. To most it’s a delightful nonsense rhyme set to music. But it had a quite serious purpose when it was written.
It is a good deal more than just a repetitious melody with pretty phrases and a list of strange gifts.
Catholics in England during the period 1558 to 1829, when Parliament finally emancipated Catholics in England, were prohibited from ANY practice of their faith by law - private OR public. It was a crime to BE a Catholic.
“The Twelve Days of Christmas” was written in England as one of the “catechism songs” to help young Catholics learn the tenets of their faith - a memory aid, when to be caught with anything in writing indicating adherence to the Catholic faith could not only get you imprisoned, it could get you hanged, or shortened by a head - or hanged, drawn and quartered, a rather peculiar and ghastly punishment I’m not aware was ever practiced anywhere else. Hanging, drawing and quartering involved hanging a person by the neck until they had almost, but not quite, suffocated to death; then the party was taken down from the gallows, and disembowelled while still alive; and while the entrails were still lying on the street, where the executioners stomped all over them, the victim was tied to four large farm horses, and literally torn into five parts - one to each limb and the remaining torso.
The songs gifts are hidden meanings to the teachings of the faith. The “true love” mentioned in the song doesn’t refer to an earthly suitor, it refers to God Himself. The “me” who receives the presents refers to every baptized person. The partridge in a pear tree is Jesus Christ, the Son of God. In the song, Christ is symbolically presented as a mother partridge which feigns injury to decoy predators from her helpless nestlings, much in memory of the expression of Christ’s sadness over the fate of Jerusalem: “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! How often would I have sheltered thee under my wings, as a hen does her chicks, but thou wouldst not have it so…”
p. The Urban Legends Reference Pages explores this legend and presents enough evidence to support it’s conclusion that this story is indeed false.
p. It must be said that, although false, this “Origin” does have a wonderful Christian sentiment and emphasizes some of the foundational principles of the Christian Faith.
p. [ Full Story @ Snopes.com ]
p(small). Source: Urban Legends Reference Pages © 1995-2003 by Barbara and David P. Mikkelson
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