Like so many other aspects of ritual that populate a realm of hazy detail this year’s holiday meditations led to asking: what exactly are the twelve days of Christmas? And, as usual the answer isn’t exactly easy. In Christian custom the twelve days bridge Christmas and the Epiphany, when God, manifest in human being as Jesus Christ, is celebrated. Depending on the denomination some reckonings begin on December 25 and end on January 5 while others go from the 26th to the 6th. This period, also known as Christmastide, culminates on the Twelfth Night which marks the coming of the epiphany and the traditional feast and merrymaking that attend the occasion.
Further complicating the picture is how dates are offset
within different denominations depending on whether or not they are aligned
with the Julian or the Gregorian calendars.
In exploring
the Twelve Days of Christmas the well known song inevitably comes under
consideration. "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 of the twelve days of
Christmas.” (Wikipedia)
and the numerous variants keep step with multiplicity of detail. A dozen or more versions of the words, from
Mirth Without Merriment (1780) to Swortzell’s (1966) present well known and
some lesser known characters - mainly in the latter stanzas - in differing
sequence. Things are comparatively stable through seven swans a swimming; at
eight an 1842 rendition has ladies dancing instead of the more regularly encountered
maids a milking. Nine through twelve each, at different times, see ladies
dancing, lords a leaping, drummers drumming and even, in the 1867 Cliftonian
verse, badgers baiting. The 1909 Austin verse is the one familiar to many
Americans.
Understanding the changes within the song’s words throughout
the past few centuries
sheds light on variations within illustrations and elucidates subtle semantic conundrums such as “four calling birds” – it was
originally “collie birds”, collie being an English regional term for “black”. See
more here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Twelve_Days_of_Christmas_%28song%29
Of
the narrative's numerous visual treatments the 1949
interpretation by Ilonka Karasz appeals for its sensitive patterning and
delicately poised forms which imbue the pictures with a lyrical
quintessence. The successive segments of
the song are rendered with subtle shifts of balance among the characters as
they increasingly crowd the page with their well ordered ranks. The
illustrator’s playfulness abounds but is especially endearing in the movement
of the five gold rings. Finding them in Karasz’ densely
patterned drawings, stylized in her native Hungarian visual language, becomes a bit
of a game. 
