The Twelve Days of Christmas

We are all familiar with the carol, “The Twelve Days of Christmas.”

We have all smiled indulgently at the extravagance of the lover who showered upon his beloved so many fantastic and inconvenient gifts. Every day of the Christmas season she received a new token of his love, each more fabulous than the last and increasingly numerous until she was the proud possessor of twenty-three birds, some valuable jewellery, a varied assortment of musicians and entertainers, and eight milkmaids.

But it is more than a rhapsody of strange and delightful nonsense. It is a song of Catholic instruction. Catholics in England during the period 1558 to 1829, when Parliament finally emancipated Catholics in England, were prohibited from ANY practice of their faith by law – private OR public. It was a crime to BE a Catholic. So the English Catholics created as a memory aid to help children learn…