According to the Catholic News Agency, the verse was written during a time in England when Catholics were not permitted to openly practice their faith. As a result, it is believed that the carol was a catechism song for young Catholics. The song is also said to contain hidden meanings designed to help children learn about their faith. If you would like to explore this idea click on this link: -and-traditions/the-history-of-the-twelve-days-of-christmas
12 gifts of christmas youtube
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Depending on your interpretation of the song, most of these gifts are repeats. As I researched the subject I was surprised to find this is the interpretation of every site I looked at except one. Accordingly, each day the individual receiving gifts will again receive all the same gifts from the previous days plus new ones. Therefore, it becomes very expensive. In other words, on day one a single gift of a partridge is received. On the second day a new gift of two turtle Doves plus another partridge is given. Then day three brings another partridge, two more doves, plus 3 French Hens and so on.
The problem with gifts is that you almost always give something you want for yourself. There are obvious exceptions, such as a woman giving a man a tie, but even then he is almost certain to receive the tie she thinks he should be wearing. Most of the time the rule applies, as I'm reminded every time I use Chaz's iPod, iPhone and MacBook Pro.
People give me books they want to read, music they enjoy listening to, and subscriptions to publications they value, such as the Weekly Standard, Organic Gardening, and Nutrition Action--an excellent publication, but less interesting to me, you understand, now that I don't eat or drink. Asked by editors year after year to recommend a holiday gift for our readers, I invariably find myself at a loss. This year, however, a bright shining bulb illuminated above my head: I would recommend only gifts I myself desired! These choices might be meaningless for others, but at least they'd be sincere. They are so sincere, indeed, that I already possess every single one of these gifts, so they will be of no help to you in answering the age-old question, What to Give Roger?
I'll list them in order from the most expensive to the least. For free gifts, I recommend an e-mail containing a list of Web Sites I Love That You Have Never Heard Of, such as Tom O'Bedlam's sonorous poetry readings at Spoken Verse, the incomparable Bob and Ray, and of course the comprehensive reference work the Omnificent English Dictionary In Limerick Form.
"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 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.
Subsequent verses follow the same pattern. Each verse deals with the next day of Christmastide, adding one new gift and then repeating all the earlier gifts, so that each verse is one line longer than its predecessor.
A similar cumulative verse from Scotland, "The Yule Days", has been likened to "The Twelve Days of Christmas" in the scholarly literature.[20] It has thirteen days rather than twelve, and the number of gifts does not increase in the manner of "The Twelve Days". Its final verse, as published in Chambers, Popular Rhymes, Fireside Stories, and Amusements of Scotland (1842), runs as follows:[29]
In the Faroe Islands, there is a comparable counting Christmas song. The gifts include: one feather, two geese, three sides of meat, four sheep, five cows, six oxen, seven dishes, eight ponies, nine banners, ten barrels, eleven goats, twelve men, thirteen hides, fourteen rounds of cheese and fifteen deer.[32] These were illustrated in 1994 by local cartoonist Óli Petersen (born 1936) on a series of two stamps issued by the Faroese Philatelic Office.[33]
In the northern counties of England, the song was often called the "Ten Days of Christmas", as there were only ten gifts. It was also known in Somerset, Dorset, and elsewhere in England. The kinds of gifts vary in a number of the versions, some of them becoming alliterative tongue-twisters.[45] "The Twelve Days of Christmas" was also widely popular in the United States and Canada. It is mentioned in the section on "Chain Songs" in Stith Thompson's Motif-Index of Folk-Literature (Indiana University Studies, Vol. 5, 1935), p. 416.
According to The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, "Suggestions have been made that the gifts have significance, as representing the food or sport for each month of the year. Importance [certainly has] long been attached to the Twelve Days, when, for instance, the weather on each day was carefully observed to see what it would be in the corresponding month of the coming year. Nevertheless, whatever the ultimate origin of the chant, it seems probable [that] the lines that survive today both in England and France are merely an irreligious travesty."[46]In 1979, a Canadian hymnologist, Hugh D. 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).[64] McKellar offered no evidence for his claim. Three years later, in 1982, Fr. Hal Stockert wrote an article (subsequently posted on-line in 1995) in which he suggested a similar possible use of the twelve gifts as part of a catechism.[65][66] The possibility that the twelve gifts were used as a catechism during the period of Catholic repression was also hypothesised in this same time period (1987 and 1992) by Fr. James Gilhooley, chaplain of Mount Saint Mary College of Newburgh, New York.[67][68] Snopes.com, a website reviewing urban legends, Internet rumours, e-mail forwards, and other stories of unknown or questionable origin, concludes that the hypothesis of the twelve gifts of Christmas being a surreptitious Catholic catechism is incorrect. None of the enumerated items would distinguish Catholics from Protestants, and so would hardly need to be secretly encoded.[52]
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 44 bars, while most of the lines naming gifts receive one 34 bar per gift with the exception of "Five gold rings", which receives two 44 bars, "Two turtle doves" getting a 44 bar with "And a" on its fourth beat and "partridge in a pear tree" getting two 44 bars of music. In most versions, a 44 bar of music immediately follows "partridge in a pear tree". "On the" is found in that bar on the fourth (pickup) beat for the next verse. The successive bars of three for the gifts surrounded by bars of four give the song its hallmark "hurried" quality.
Since 1984, the cumulative costs of the items mentioned in the song have been used as a tongue-in-cheek economic indicator. Assuming the gifts are repeated in full in each round of the song, then a total of 364 items are delivered by the twelfth day.[122][123] This custom began with and is maintained by PNC Bank.[124][125] Two pricing charts are created, referred to as the Christmas Price Index and The True Cost of Christmas. The former is an index of the current costs of one set of each of the gifts given by the True Love to the singer of the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas". The latter is the cumulative cost of all the gifts with the repetitions listed in the song. The people mentioned in the song are hired, not purchased. The total costs of all goods and services for the 2015 Christmas Price Index is US$34,130.99,[126] or $155,407.18 for all 364 items.[127][128] The original 1984 cost was $12,623.10. The index has been humorously criticised for not accurately reflecting the true cost of the gifts featured in the Christmas carol.[129]
While sects of Christianity celebrate the 12 days of Christmas differently, certain ones, such as the Eastern Orthodox Church, consider the Epiphany to be the most important day of the Christmas season. Some exchange gifts on each of the 12 days instead of only on Christmas day.
While there's a consensus on what Christmas commemorates, what the Epiphany honors varies between churches and cultures. Some churches believe it's the day of Christ's baptism, while others celebrate it as the day the three magi visited Jesus with gifts.
Although most in the Eastern Orthodox Church now adhere to the Western calendar, those in the Greek Orthodox Church still use a different religious calendar, celebrating Christmas on Jan. 7, and the Epiphany on Jan. 19. Some Latin-American cultures celebrate the Epiphany as Three Kings Day, giving gifts on Jan. 6 instead of Christmas. Other cultures will give one gift per day from Christmas to the Epiphany. This tradition has never really caught on in America, where the celebration of Christmas Eve and Christmas Day is most common [source: Bratcher].
Hallmark Channel's movie 12 Gifts of Christmas is now available on Netflix. The TV movie released in 2015 and showcases the story of Anna who is an unemployed painter, and somehow ends up becoming a personal shopper for Marc, who is an uptight corporate executive. The film has a 6.6/10 rating on IMDb, however, 95% of Google users have liked the film. Read on to know more about 12 gifts of Christmas cast and their characters. 2ff7e9595c
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