The Twelve Days of Christmas

This is one of my personal favourite Christmas songs.  My Grandmother, Marion (Davy) Foreman taught me all the Christmas carols and we would start practicing them in November.  She played the piano and we both sang.  When I could read music, I was in charge of turning the pages.  With The Twelve Days of Christmas I would sing the numbers as fast as I could to see if I could sing them all before she could play them all on the piano.  I always won the race and we would laugh and laugh.  These are some of the best Christmas memories.  

The twelve days of Christmas lie between December 25 and Epiphany, January 6.  it was on January 6 that the Three Magi brought gifts to the Christ Child in the manger - the first Christmas gifts!  It was a common folk belief that on the even of January 6 animals were given the power of speech.  

The Twelve Days of Christmas is an English Christmas carol that enumerates in the manner of a cumulative song a series of increasingly grand gifts given on each day.  The song, published in England in 1780 without music as a chant or rhyme, is thought to be French in origin.  The tunes of collected versions vary. The standard tune now associated with it is derived from a 1909 arrangement of a traditional folk melody by English composer Frederic Austin, who first introduced the now familiar prolongation of the verse "five gold rings".

The Holy City

A few years before she passed away, my Grandmother, Marion (Davy) Foreman gathered by Aunt and I at the piano on Boxing Day to teach us this song.  She said it was her mother's favourite (Ida Mae Wilton Davy).  I had never heard it before and the sheet music she used was old and frayed at the edges.  My Aunt remembered hearing it ages ago.  I have since heard it sung at a couple church services, but it isn't one of the more well known Christmas carols.  I've included a link with this one so you can hear it. 

The Holy City is a religious ballad dating from 1892, with music by Michael Maybrick writing under the alias Stephen Adams, with lyrics by Frederic Weatherly.

The song is mentioned in James Joyce's Ulysses, published 1918-1920.  It gained renewed popularity when it was sung by Jeanette MacDonald in the 1936 hit film San Francisco.

 - Angela Bobier