Hmmmm, must think on this for awhile and then make a guess because I really don't know this one.

Annette

Ooh...love multiple choice! An easy way to do trivia when you're busy...looks like you've had an epiphany!

I think there may be some different traditions as we celebrate starting on Christmas Day to Epiphany. DH was a pastor and took vacation starting on Christmas Day through the 12 days of Christmas. Our church had a late Christmas Eve service. We would come home after and open one gift (a nod to my growing up tradition of opening gifts on Xmas Eve) then sleep late Xmas morning and open the rest of the gifts at a more leisurely pace. Open a gift, play with it awhile, open another gift. I always considered the 12 days of Christmas a gift to my family. And now this is the period when we find a day to celebrate with our son and his family.

I am counting the days until Christmas as there is lots to do and many friends and family to see and share the joy of the season.

Hmmmm.....I guess that depends on if you consider start and end as 12 midnight. If memory serves me correctly, Ukraninian Christmas is Januray 6th until the 19th and the Christian Christmas 12 days start on December 25th and finish up with Ukrainian Christmas Eve, midnight of December 5th. I am not Ukrainian but many of my friends growing up were so we often celebrated right up to January 19th. Oh, the food!! More fun for us with 24 days of Christmas!!! :)

Ginny

For the multiple choice I go with C for the best answer. It is the only one that has 12 days. And C for Christmas!

A Wise Man once told me to always go with my first guess...so I am going with choice C. I would like none of the above though since we always counted it from Dec. 25 to Epiphany on the 6th or most accurately, the night before on the 5th which is Twelfth Night. No matter what, decorations come down on the 6th!

Bobbie, does your gift-opening tadition come from a Swedish background? My grandmother was from Sweden and they had that tradition, although we were allowed only one gift the night before.

Ginny, aren't all Christmases, "Christian"? ;)

Cynthia

"C" for me too :).

Annette

Purely on a day-count basis, I also have to throw in with answer C on this one.

No, not Swedish. My family is Norwegian and German. I don't know which side the tradition came from though as a dairy farm family early morning hours were spent milking cows.

Santa came while we were out doing chores on Christmas Eve. The little kids would come to the barn with us older kids and we would listen for Santa's sleigh. When chores were done we would hurry inside to a light dinner and then open gifts. Our large family would pass out gifts and everyone opened them at the same time.

Cynthia ~ Yes, technically all Christmases are Christian, however, the celebrations are not always the same. Since the question was about the "traditional" 12 days of Christmas, it was just easier to state the traditional Christian practice for most of us in Canada and the US than to question "which" 12 days as in the Ukrainian Orthodox religion for example. If that makes any sense.....

Ginny

{{gwi:618121}}
Oh, you are all smarter that me!! Yes, the answer is 'C' for Christmas.

The twelve days in the song are the twelve days starting Christmas day, or in some traditions, the day after Christmas (December 26) (Boxing Day or St. Stephen's Day, as being the feast day of St. Stephen Protomartyr) to the day before Epiphany, or the Feast of the Epiphany (January 6, or the Twelfth Day). Twelfth Night is defined by the Oxford English Dictionary as "the evening of the fifth of January, preceding Twelfth Day, the eve of the Epiphany, formerly the last day of the Christmas festivities and observed as a time of merrymaking."

Although the specific origins of the chant are not known, it possibly began as a Twelfth Night "memories-and-forfeits" game, in which a leader recited a verse, each of the players repeated the verse, the leader added another verse, and so on until one of the players made a mistake, with the player who erred having to pay a penalty, such as offering up a kiss or a sweet. This is how the game is offered up in its earliest known printed version, in the children's book Mirth without Mischief (c. 1780) published in England, which 100 years later Lady Gomme, a collector of folktales and rhymes, described playing every Twelfth Day night before eating mince pies and twelfth cake.

The song apparently is older than the printed version, though it is not known how much older. Textual evidence indicates that the song was not English in origin, but French, though it is considered an English carol. Three French versions of the song are known. If the "partridge in a pear tree" of the English version is to be taken literally, then it seems as if the chant comes from France, since the red-legged (or French) partridge, which perches in trees more frequently than the native common (or grey) partridge, was not successfully introduced into England until about 1770. The song was imported to the US in 1910 by Emily Brown, of the Downer Teacher's College in Milwaukee, WI, who had encountered the song in an English music store sometime before. She needed the song for the school Christmas pageant, an annual extravaganza that she was known for organizing.

So there you have it. As to the meaning of all of the gifts, no one is really sure. It is the 1700's version of 'American Pie'!!
For mnswgal, Cyn, Ginny, Annette, TM (did I miss anyone?):

As always, thanks for playing, and thanks for your patience through the 'mouse debacle'. Now to see if it still works.

Nancy.

Great question, Nancy. Thanks for the fun and the stars.

TM

Just realized I never came back to check the answer! Great question, Nancy. Thanks for the stars!