Answers to Go

Q.What do the twelve days of Christmas refer to?

A. The “Twelve Days of Christmas,” now a popular song, has a medieval origin. Originally, it represented the span between the birth of Christ and the coming of the Magi, the three wise men. This year it falls between Dec. 25 and Jan. 5, 2023 (the Epiphany, sometimes also called Three Kings’ Day). However, it is also a charming example of medieval numerological wit.

While I am not a math whiz, with the help of the book “The Folklore of American Holidays” (available at the library) edited by Hennig Hohen (pp 401-403), I will attempt to explain just why this is a numbers joke. Here is the explanation given in the book: “It is to be noted that on the first day the true love gave one gift (a partridge in a pear tree), on the second day he gave three gifts (two turtle doves and a partridge in a pear tree), etc., so that on the twelfth day he had gave seventy-eight fanciful gifts. Since on each “X”th day (day he gave a gift), he gave the sum of the first “X” natural number items. A convenient formula for the sum of these superficially senseless gifts is: where “S” denotes the sum of the gifts, where the large sigma (Σ) denotes the operation of summation over 1, 2,…, n cases where “x” denotes the number of the day and where “n” denotes the total number of days.

The upshot of all this math is that the gift giver turns out to give exactly 365 gifts, one for each day of the year, excluding Christmas, of course.

If you are asking about the symbolism of the song, well that’s another thing. According to the 2022 Christmas Holiday Ideas magazine, “Good Housekeeping” (goodhousekeeping. com/holidays/ christmas-ideas/ a29212592/12-days-ofchristmas- meaning-facts/ ),they were used to secretly pass on religious ideology. They mean:

• The Partridge in the Pear Tree is Jesus Christ.

• The Two Turtle Doves are The Old and New Testaments.

• The Three French hens are Faith, Hope and Charity, the theological virtues.

• The Four Calling Birds are the four gospels and/or the four evangelists.

• The Five Golden Rings are the first five books of the Old Testament.

• The Six Geese A-laying are the six days of creation.

• The Seven Swans A-swimming are the gifts of the Holy Spirit, the seven sacraments.

• The Eight Maids A-milking are the eight beatitudes.

• The Nine Ladies Dancing are the nine fruits of the Holy Spirit.

• The 10 Lords A-leaping are the 10 commandments.

• The 11 Pipers Piping are the eleven faithful apostles.

• The 12 Drummers Drumming are the twelve points of doctrine in the Apostle’s Creed.

Also reported in the “Good Housekeeping” article is the current dollar amount for all those presents — it is $41,205.58. Apparently, swans are very expensive: $1,875 each. Gosh — I’ll stick to the pear!

Suzanne Sanders is the columnist for the library. She is the Community Services Manager for the San Marcos Public Library and came from the Austin Public Library in 2015 after having served there as a librarian for over 20 years. She gratefully accepts your questions for this column.