'The Twelve Days of Christmas' and the 'cheerful nonsense' of English Christmas Carols

Andrew Gant

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On the first day of Christmas,  My true love sent to me  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the second day of Christmas,  My true love sent to me  Two turtle doves, and  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the third day of Christmas,  My true love sent to me  Three French hens,  Two turtle doves, and  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the fourth day of Christmas,  My true love sent to me  Four calling birds, Three French hens,  Two turtle doves, and  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the fifth day of Christmas,  My true love sent to me  Five gold rings,  Four calling birds,  Three French hens,  Two turtle doves, and  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the sixth day of Christmas,  My true love sent to me  Six geese a-laying,  Five gold rings,  Four calling birds,  Three French hens,  Two turtle doves, and  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the seventh day of Christmas,  My true love sent to me  Seven swans a-swimming,  Six geese a-laying,  Five gold rings,  Four calling birds,  Three French hens,  Two turtle doves, and  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the eighth day of Christmas,  My true love sent to me  Eight maids a-milking,  Seven swans a-swimming,  Six geese a-laying,  Five gold rings,  Four calling birds,  Three French hens,  Two turtle doves, and  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the ninth day of Christmas,  My true love sent to me  Nine drummers drumming,  Eight maids a-milking,  Seven swans a-swimming,  Six geese a-laying,  Five gold rings,  Four calling birds,  Three French hens,  Two turtle doves, and  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the tenth day of Christmas,  My true love sent to me  Ten pipers piping,  Nine drummers drumming,  Eight maids a-milking,  Seven swans a-swimming,  Six geese a-laying,  Five gold rings,  Four calling birds,  Three French hens,  Two turtle doves, and  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the eleventh day of Christmas, My true love sent to me  Eleven ladies dancing,  Ten pipers piping, Nine drummers drumming,  Eight maids a-milking,  Seven swans a-swimming,  Six geese a-laying,  Five gold rings,  Four calling birds,  Three French hens,  Two turtle doves, and  A partridge in a pear tree.  On the twelfth day of Christmas My true love sent to me Twelve fiddlers fiddling, Eleven ladies dancing, Ten pipers piping, Nine drummers drumming, Eight maids a-milking, Seven swans a-swimming, Six geese a-laying, Five gold rings, Four calling birds, Three French hens, Two turtle doves, and A partridge in a pear tree. By the time we've worked our way through the cumulative effect of all the gifts offered by the <a href="https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/42913/the-twelve-days-of-christmas" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">Twelve Days of Christmas</a>, it's quite a haul of geese, maids, peers, pipers, musical instruments and ultimately twelve partridges, each presumably in its own pear tree. This cheerful nonsense sums up an important aspect of our English Christmas carol tradition: much of it has little to do with Christmas, less to do with church, and very often isn’t entirely, or indeed even slightly, English.  To take just one example: It Came Upon the Midnight Clear is a setting of a poem by Edmund Hamilton Sears, a 19th-century Unitarian minister from Massachusetts, US. Sears, a good poet who wrote and published many songs and hymns beyond the one for which he is best remembered today, published It Came Upon the Midnight Clear in 1850. A year later he asked his friend Richard Storrs Willis, a prominent New York-based organist, to write a tune to go with it. Willis’s tune is the one still sung today in the US. Twenty-five years later the song was included in Church Hymns with Tunes, printed in England under the editorship of the prolific composer Arthur (later Sir Arthur) Sullivan. Sullivan did not use Willis’s tune, but instead paired Sears’ text to a tune which he simply called Noel. He identified it as a "traditional air rearranged". Here we have many of the elements of our much-loved English carol family: words and music from different parts of the geographical and musico-liturgical world, and a dash of folksong. But we also have some puzzling elements. Lots of Christmas carols are sung to folksong tunes, including God Rest You Merry, Gentlemen and O Little Town of Bethlehem. In most cases, a scholar and collector such as Cecil Sharp or Ralph Vaughan Williams heard and noted down the tune in a village pub or someone’s home. There is no evidence of where Sullivan got the tune he called Noel, nor, in truth, that it is actually a folk song at all. Did he compose it in a deliberately folky style? It wouldn’t be the only example. We also have a song which, to this day, is sung to different tunes in England and the US: the same is true of Away in a Manger and O Little Town of Bethlehem. And there’s not much God in Sears's rendition, and certainly no Jesus. It’s a song about peace. All our wonderful carols have their own story to tell. There are some great stories among them, and plenty of surprises. Hence how did the partridge get up the pear tree, which it emphatically never does in real life? Well, here’s a possible clue: the French word for partridge is perdrix. Pronounce it, with a French accent. See? Happy Christmas. And a final word from Sears and an early work of his: ‘Glory to God!’ the sounding skies Loud with their anthems ring, ‘Peace to the earth, good will to men, From heaven’s eternal king’ Photo: Christmas decorations with a theme of the Twelve Days of Christmas at Castle Howard in North Yorkshire, England, 16 November 2018. Design team Charlotte Lloyd Webber and Bretta Gereke worked with the Twelve Days of Christmas theme to produce flamboyant displays and installations throughout the stately home.(Photo by Ian Forsyth/Getty Images.)

Andrew Gant

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