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Date: Sun, 28 Nov 1999 21:56:10 -0500
To: alapadre@alapadre.net
From: "Dr. Thomas G. Wack"
Subject: The Twelve Days of Christmas (The Carol)

Dear Father,

I logged onto your "alapadre.net" page, and, since "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is such a delightful carol, I turned to Fr. Hal Stockert's "Origin of the Twelve Days of Christmas" and also Tim Knappenberger's explanation. Being a literary historian, I too have researched the origins of that carol, and I'd like to share with you my own conclusions, which I present in summary form:

1. It was not until after both the Elizabethan Period and the Puritan Commonwealth that the TDC song ("The Twelve Days of Christmas) first made an appearance in print in England. It could not have been a "code" song during the penal periods.

2. Furthermore, the code meanings that the items in the TDC are claimed to stand for would not have been regarded as at all "treasonable" in either of those penal periods (i.e., items such as the Trinity, the Pentateuch, the Commandments, etc., were accepted by both Anglicans and Presbyterians).

3. However, many of the items listed in TDC are themselves secular and even somewhat pagan (e.g., the lords a-leaping and the ladies dancing), and these items might have been looked at askance by Puritans. This is true also of the erotic symbolism associated with such items as partridges, pear trees, turtledoves, etc. A further note is that the Commonwealth banned Christmas carols altogether.

4. Taken as a whole, the TDC suggests a delughtful, secular carol that is tied to the Christmas season and that celebrates feasting and dancing in a Renaissance style (colly birds or blackbirds baked in a pie, etc.).

5. Those who claim that that the TDC has a "hidden code" also claim it to be a "catechism song." It is known that in Spain in the sixteenth-century some Jesuits taught catechism by means of songs, but this device apparently was not practiced in England. No connection has been found between the Jesuits and the TDC.

6. What does seem to be the case is that someone, either mistakenly or as a joke, has confused the TDC song with an earlier carol named both "A New Dial" and "In Those Twelve Days" (the latter found in "Sandys' Collection of Christmas Carols," 1833, although this carol dates from before 1625). "In Those Twelve Days" is a numerical, question-and-answer carol, in which each of the twelve days of Christmas is given a religious meaning: e.g., the first day refers to "God alone," the second to the two Testaments, the third to the Trinity, etc. Diverging from the "code" interpretations given to the TDC are the interpretations for the more difficult numbers of five (the five senses "used well"), six (the six ages of the world), and eleven (the eleven thousand virgin martyrs). Different references are used in the other versions of this carol (e.g., seven Liberal Arts," "nine muses").

It is quite evident that someone has simply equated most of the numbered items in "The Twelve Days of Christmas" with the corresponding items in "In Those Twelve Days" and passed this off as the "true" meaning of the carol!

Cordially,

Thomas G. Wack
Professor Emeritus of English
Wheeling Jesuit University
http://www.hgo.net/~drwackes