Who originally wrote the song The 12 Days of Christmas?
The Twelve Days of Christmas” is an English Christmas carol (Roud # 68) which enumerates a series of increasingly grandiose gifts given on each of the twelve days of Christmas. However, textual evidence may indicate that the song actually is French in origin. It is a cumulative song, meaning that each verse is built on top of the previous verses. It has been one of the most popular and most-recorded Christmas songs in America and Europe throughout the past century. Music origin The date of the song’s first performance is not known, though it was used in European and Scandinavian traditions as early as the 16th century. In the early 20th century, Frederic Austin wrote an arrangement where he added his melody from “Five gold(en) rings” onwards (The New Oxford Book of Carols), which has since become standard. Origin The twelve days of Christmas in the song are the twelve days from the birth of Christ (Christmas, December 25) to the coming of the Magi (Epiphany, January 6, or the Twelfth D
