Speaker 1: Welcome to part Time Genius, the production of I Heart Radio.
Speaker 1: I Guess what will What's that man? Go? So you
Speaker 1: know how in the twelve Days of Christmas, like half
Speaker 1: of the gifts are just a bunch of random birds.
Speaker 1: It's kind of crazy. Actually, You've got swan, you got geese,
Speaker 1: you've got turtle, doves, the partridge. The whole song is
Speaker 1: like lousy with birds, yeah, or foul with foul if
Speaker 1: you want to go a full dad joke. But uh,
Speaker 1: it makes you wonder what the true love and this
Speaker 1: song is thinking right, like like what are you supposed
Speaker 1: to do with all this menagerie of birds? So we
Speaker 1: did some digging this week and it turns out the
Speaker 1: answer is you eat them, or at least that's the
Speaker 1: prevailing theory, because most of the birds of the song
Speaker 1: were served at holiday feasts in sixteenth century Europe. I've
Speaker 1: actually not thought about that. So so this means the
Speaker 1: song is basically just a menu, right pretty much. And
Speaker 1: if you're the kind of person who's listening to this
Speaker 1: and your mouth is watering and you're wishing you could
Speaker 1: recreate this bird centric feast in your own home, well
Speaker 1: you are in luck because there's a company in England
Speaker 1: named Hell Farm and it offers something called the twelve
Speaker 1: bird True Love Roast. I've actually got the order page
Speaker 1: pulled up here and I want you to see this. Well, uh,
Speaker 1: that is something else. I mean, it's kind of like
Speaker 1: the Urn Ducan on steroids, is the only way I
Speaker 1: could describe it. Yeah. The company calls it a twelve
Speaker 1: bird roast because it's made with twelve different kinds of birds,
Speaker 1: one for each day of Christmas. But they didn't stop
Speaker 1: at just one of each kind because they're actually forty
Speaker 1: eight birds crammed into this thing. Eight different types of
Speaker 1: stuffing as well, but forty eight birds, Lord, this thing
Speaker 1: must be enormous. Yeah. And according to the website, the
Speaker 1: True Love Roast weighs about fifty five pounds and will
Speaker 1: feed about a hundred and twenty five but it will
Speaker 1: cost you. It's with a dish, so pretty steep. But
Speaker 1: on the bright side, delivery is free and each roast
Speaker 1: comes in its own large wicker hamper, fully prepared and
Speaker 1: ready to cook. I like the they throw in the
Speaker 1: hamper to really seal the deal, you know, in case
Speaker 1: you were on the fence about spending a thousand dollars
Speaker 1: on a ton of bird meat. Now you know it's
Speaker 1: it's worth it. Well. I I like the fact because
Speaker 1: it's such a clear example of just how bizarre the
Speaker 1: song really is. I mean, I've probably heard it like
Speaker 1: a hundred times or more in my life, right, but
Speaker 1: it never gets any less strange. And I still don't
Speaker 1: really know anything about this song. And after asking around
Speaker 1: this week, I realized I'm not the only one who
Speaker 1: feels this way. So with the holidays upon us, I
Speaker 1: thought we could do our part by taking a closer
Speaker 1: look and then sharing what we consider to be the
Speaker 1: nine weirdest facts about the twelve Days of Christmas. In
Speaker 1: fact one is that the song is actually a giant menu,
Speaker 1: which means we've got eight more to go. Let's dive in.
Speaker 1: Y Hey, their podcast listeners, Welcome to Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: I'm Will Pearson, and as always I'm joined by my
Speaker 1: good friend Manes Ticketer and on the other side of
Speaker 1: the soundproof glass chowing down on what he claims are
Speaker 1: three French hens. I really can't fact check this one,
Speaker 1: that easily. That's our friend and producer Lull. He does
Speaker 1: look like he's really enjoying it. He is kind of
Speaker 1: giving the game away by drinking out of that Popeye's cup.
Speaker 1: But also joining us today is our researcher pal, Gabe Bluesier.
Speaker 1: It's been a little while, Gabe. Thanks for coming on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: of course, thanks for having me. It's nice to be back. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we brought Gabe out of exile, but he's actually the
Speaker 1: one who suggested we zero in on this twelve Days
Speaker 1: of Christmas theme for today's show. Gave what was your
Speaker 1: favorite one as a kid? Actually it was this one,
Speaker 1: like my family to this thing where we would sing
Speaker 1: the gifts like one day at a time, So we'd
Speaker 1: start on December fourteen, singing just the first line the
Speaker 1: partridge part uh, and then we just keep on one
Speaker 1: day at a time until Christmas, when we would finally
Speaker 1: try to get through the whole thing. And I mean
Speaker 1: emphasis on the try part, like we didn't always make it.
Speaker 1: But that is an amazing family tradition. I love that
Speaker 1: practicing the song and pieces does seem like a good
Speaker 1: way to actually remember that song. But I think he
Speaker 1: might be doing it slightly wrong game, to be honest
Speaker 1: with you, I like that you just heard about my
Speaker 1: family tradition and already you have improvements for it. That's
Speaker 1: something I'm here to help, and it it did line
Speaker 1: up with the fact that I already had on deck,
Speaker 1: because one thing I always wondered is when exactly are
Speaker 1: the twelve Days of Christmas? Like, is that even a
Speaker 1: real thing? And it turns out it is a real thing.
Speaker 1: But counterintuitively, the twelve days don't end on Christmas Day.
Speaker 1: They actually begin on Christmas Day, or at least that's
Speaker 1: how it works in some forms of Western Christianity, including Catholicism.
Speaker 1: So according to tradition, the twelve day span is meant
Speaker 1: to represent the period of time between the birth of
Speaker 1: Christ and the day that the Three Wise Men brought
Speaker 1: him gifts. So if anybody out there really wants to
Speaker 1: recreate the song or seeing it on the appropriate nights,
Speaker 1: you would start on December and you would end on
Speaker 1: January five, or sometimes known as the Twelfth Night. Oh wow,
Speaker 1: So thirty years of family tradition straight down the drain.
Speaker 1: But I'm actually glad we're getting into some of the
Speaker 1: history of this song that that sets things up nicely
Speaker 1: from my first fact, which is that the origin of
Speaker 1: the song itself is still a big mystery, Like The
Speaker 1: earliest written version was a poem in a book of
Speaker 1: nursery rhymes called Mirth Without Mischief, and the book was
Speaker 1: published in England in seventeen eighty. But historians believe the
Speaker 1: Twelve Days poem is a lot older than that, and
Speaker 1: it may have originally come from France. But even though
Speaker 1: we don't know the exact origin of the song, there
Speaker 1: are a few theories. The best one is that it
Speaker 1: started as a memory game that kids would play during
Speaker 1: those twelve night celebrations you mentioned, And basically kids would
Speaker 1: get they're in a circle, and they'd go around reciting
Speaker 1: the poem one verse at a time, much like my
Speaker 1: family did, until someone made a mistake and the player
Speaker 1: who messed up would be out of the game, and
Speaker 1: the last one standing was the winner. So I I
Speaker 1: did notice that you called it a poem just now,
Speaker 1: and you said kids would recite it, not sing it.
Speaker 1: So was the Twelve Days of Christmas actually written um?
Speaker 1: Not as a song originally? Yeah, that's right. It actually
Speaker 1: wasn't set to music until the early twentieth century, so
Speaker 1: quite a while. And until then it was just a
Speaker 1: kind of poem called a cumulative verse. So another example
Speaker 1: would be that nursery rhyme there was an old lady
Speaker 1: who swallowed a fly. You know, she keeps swallowing one
Speaker 1: thing to swallow the other. And pretty much any poem
Speaker 1: or chant where you use pattern verses like that to
Speaker 1: sort of build out a narrative that's a cumulative verse.
Speaker 1: Well you know, you know. My first fact was meant
Speaker 1: to do some myth busting. So one thing I've always heard,
Speaker 1: especially online, is that the twelve Days of Christmas is
Speaker 1: actually this coded guide to the Catholic faith. So the
Speaker 1: two turtle drives are are really the Old and New Testaments,
Speaker 1: the six Gees of Laying or the six Days of
Speaker 1: Creation and so on. The idea of this kind of
Speaker 1: stems from the fact that from the sixteenth to nineteenth century,
Speaker 1: being a Catholic was a crime in Protestant England. So
Speaker 1: according to legend, Catholic kids would sing the song as
Speaker 1: a way to learn about and profess their forbidden faith
Speaker 1: while still kind of keeping it a secret from authorities.
Speaker 1: As alluded to earlier, none of this is true that
Speaker 1: there are actually a couple key points that poke holes
Speaker 1: in this theory. For starters, there's no reference to the
Speaker 1: secret history prior to the early ninety nineties, which suggests
Speaker 1: that the whole thing is just an Internet rumor that
Speaker 1: that got out of hand. But what's more damning is
Speaker 1: that none of the alleged hidden meanings make that much sense. Like,
Speaker 1: Protestants believe in all the same concepts that the gifts
Speaker 1: are supposed to represent, So the idea of Catholics having
Speaker 1: to kind of like hide this or disguise these concepts
Speaker 1: doesn't really hold that much water. Yeah, that's interesting, all right, Well,
Speaker 1: here's a quick one. So we've already discussed how this
Speaker 1: song reads like a very bird heavy menu, but there's
Speaker 1: at least one item miss sing from the song that
Speaker 1: definitely would have been on the table in medieval Europe,
Speaker 1: and that is mince pie, made from a hearty mix
Speaker 1: of finely chopped beef, dried fruit, nuts, and spices. These
Speaker 1: mince pies, or mince meat pies, they became a Christmas
Speaker 1: staple in Europe. The pies were traditionally baked in the
Speaker 1: shape of Jesus's manger, which I'd actually never heard until
Speaker 1: I was looking into this this week, and a little
Speaker 1: figure of the baby Jesus would be placed on top
Speaker 1: of each one, and they must have made a ton
Speaker 1: of these two because mince pies were actually eaten on
Speaker 1: each of the twelve days of Christmas. I can't say
Speaker 1: why the popular pies didn't make it into the song,
Speaker 1: but it's probably because a mince pie in a pear
Speaker 1: tree just doesn't quite have the same ring to it.
Speaker 1: I don't know how you guys feel. Yeah, that's somehow
Speaker 1: even less romantic than what we got, Like that is
Speaker 1: a lot of mince pie. But speaking of which, you
Speaker 1: know those five golden rings, like, of course one of
Speaker 1: the few, it's one of the few gifts in the
Speaker 1: song that isn't a bird, right, Well, surprise, the rings
Speaker 1: are in fact also birds. According to bird expert Mike Bergen,
Speaker 1: the lyric is not a reference to jewelry, but to
Speaker 1: ring necked pheasants. So as the name implies those birds,
Speaker 1: they have bands of yellowish feathers that kind of wrap
Speaker 1: around their necks. Hence the golden rings, which means that
Speaker 1: the fifth day of Christmas doesn't actually bring this grand
Speaker 1: romantic gift so much as it does more birds to eat.
Speaker 1: It's so much less romantic. The five golden rings line
Speaker 1: always reminds me of that Eddie Izard like part in
Speaker 1: his comedy routine where he points out how people just
Speaker 1: go crazy for that one that but and then they
Speaker 1: go back to forgetting how the rest of the song goes.
Speaker 1: But you know, we've got three facts left to go.
Speaker 1: Let's take a quick break and then we'll get back
Speaker 1: to it. Welcome back to part time Genius. We're talking
Speaker 1: about the alarming implications of the twelve Days of Christmas.
Speaker 1: All right, Mago, it was your turn when we left off,
Speaker 1: So what do you got for us next? So I've
Speaker 1: got another lyrical misnomer that everyone seems to fall for. First,
Speaker 1: I want to acknowledge that there are lots of different
Speaker 1: versions of this song, and that's before you even get
Speaker 1: to the parody version. So in terms of different takes,
Speaker 1: like some variants include eleven ships of sailing instead of
Speaker 1: eleven pipers piping, or nine bulls of roaring instead of
Speaker 1: nine ladies dancing. But one gift that's present in nearly
Speaker 1: every version of the song is the one for the
Speaker 1: fourth day for calling birds, And that seems like a
Speaker 1: kind of a sad one once you realize that the
Speaker 1: birds aren't intended as decorations or pets. But as dinner,
Speaker 1: as we've mentioned before, and it's odd because you normally
Speaker 1: wouldn't eat a songbird, right, But the original line apparently
Speaker 1: wasn't for calling birds. It was four collie birds CEO
Speaker 1: L l i E. It's an archaic word meaning grimy
Speaker 1: or or black as suit. And in reality the gift
Speaker 1: isn't for beautiful songbirds, but it's for blackbirds right to
Speaker 1: be baked into a pie. That is a pretty different
Speaker 1: I think, A Well, there's been a lot of talk
Speaker 1: about bird eating today, and so it falls on me
Speaker 1: to to put all of that binging in perspective. I think. So,
Speaker 1: say you want to embark on your own twelve Days
Speaker 1: of Christmas feast, but you don't have a thousand bucks
Speaker 1: lying around for a true love roast. It will be
Speaker 1: a lot more work and some weird looks from your butcher,
Speaker 1: but you could definitely put together a similar spread for
Speaker 1: a whole lot less money. And the amazing part is
Speaker 1: if you stick to a single serving of each dish
Speaker 1: and you keep the recipe simple, you actually wouldn't come
Speaker 1: out too bad nutritionally speaking. So take the first day,
Speaker 1: for example, a serving of roasted partridge has only about
Speaker 1: two d or so calories a pair is a mere
Speaker 1: nineties six calories. In fact, if you added up modern
Speaker 1: equivalents for each of the first seven days of the song,
Speaker 1: including pheasant for the fifth day, you only have a
Speaker 1: about twenty hundred calories. So you could even eat all
Speaker 1: twelve dishes in the same day if you want to.
Speaker 1: And so when you factor in all the activities mentioned
Speaker 1: for the last five days of the song, you can
Speaker 1: actually get that count down even lower. So is that
Speaker 1: what the song is supposed to be? Like? It's seven
Speaker 1: days of stuffing your face and then five days of
Speaker 1: desperately trying to work the way on. I mean, that's
Speaker 1: kind of what happens in real life, but that that's
Speaker 1: one popular interpretation that the whole thing is about one
Speaker 1: big long feast and all the activities going on during it.
Speaker 1: In fact, there's an article in The Atlantic that really
Speaker 1: leans into this theory. So the author actually breaks down
Speaker 1: the average number of calories you'd burn during thirty minutes
Speaker 1: of each activity. So, for instance, milking a cow for
Speaker 1: half an hour would burn about a hundred calories, dancing
Speaker 1: would shave off closer to two hundred than on the
Speaker 1: other end of the spectrum, you've got the flute playing,
Speaker 1: which I don't know, this may surprise you, that would
Speaker 1: actually only burn a paltry six eight calories. It seems
Speaker 1: like doing it very Yeah, it feels like this very
Speaker 1: intense activity. But you know, if you subtract all those
Speaker 1: energy expenditures from the twelve course total that we were
Speaker 1: talking about, you'd wind up with a little over two
Speaker 1: thousand calories. And while that's still a lot for one meal,
Speaker 1: it's way better than the forty calories that would make
Speaker 1: up the average Thanksgiving dinner. Yeah, that's that's probably closer
Speaker 1: to what you're looking at for a serving of that
Speaker 1: twelve bird roast you guys were talking about. It's off
Speaker 1: forty April, I think, excuse me. And actually that fits
Speaker 1: in pretty well with my last fact, which is about
Speaker 1: the ridiculous scale of gift giving that goes on in
Speaker 1: this song. I mean, because at first you think, okay,
Speaker 1: twelve days, twelve gifts. That's you know, that's a lavish
Speaker 1: number of presents. But it's not unheard of, right, It's
Speaker 1: it's not worrisome yet. It could this could still be,
Speaker 1: you know, a semi normal situation. But then you remember
Speaker 1: the amount increases with the gifts, right, two turtle doves,
Speaker 1: three french head, all the way up to twelve. So
Speaker 1: now you're at seventy eight gifts, which is too many.
Speaker 1: It is just way and then it hits you, right,
Speaker 1: this is a cumulative song, like I was saying, So
Speaker 1: you don't just get the new gift of the day,
Speaker 1: you also get all the gifts from all the previous
Speaker 1: days all over, which means that the total number of
Speaker 1: gifts in the twelve days of Christmas is a whopping
Speaker 1: three hundred and sixty four. And and I have to add,
Speaker 1: if you consider the pear trees as separate gifts from
Speaker 1: the partridges, which really you should, you add another twelve
Speaker 1: onto that, so it's really three seventy six. That is insane,
Speaker 1: especially when you remember that a large portion of those
Speaker 1: gifts they're live birds exactly. And the most troubling part
Speaker 1: is that somebody spent a ton of money on those
Speaker 1: gifts on those birds, like all those live performers. They
Speaker 1: were booked from multiple full days. That can't be cheap.
Speaker 1: And this is kind of a bonus fact, I admit,
Speaker 1: but there's actually a group of economists who crunched the
Speaker 1: numbers every year to find out just how much this
Speaker 1: full suite of gifts would cost. It's called the Christmas
Speaker 1: Price Index, and it's released by P and C Wealth Management.
Speaker 1: For it says, these three hundred plus gifts, it would
Speaker 1: set you back a hundred and fourteen thousand, six hundred
Speaker 1: fifty one dollars and eighteen cents. And because I know
Speaker 1: you're wondering the most expensive item on that list, it's
Speaker 1: surprisingly the seven swansa swimming Apparently swans go for a
Speaker 1: little over a thousand bucks apiece. Wow. And and that's
Speaker 1: even before you have to like find a lake for them.
Speaker 1: I was actually going to say, like the landscaping fees
Speaker 1: for this orchard of pear trees that you suddenly own it,
Speaker 1: it's pretty expensive. Yeah, for as long as the song
Speaker 1: as it is, like, there's a lot that goes unsaid. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean that's true, but it's also kind of what
Speaker 1: I like about it. I mean, the lyrics are so specific,
Speaker 1: and the more time goes by, the weirder and more
Speaker 1: out of place they seem to us, and yet we
Speaker 1: keep right on singing them anyways. It is endearing. But
Speaker 1: because of that wealth index fact and because this episode
Speaker 1: was your idea. I really think you deserve the trophy
Speaker 1: this week, Gave Yeah, And to go along with it,
Speaker 1: please accept this flock of wild birds that we caught
Speaker 1: this week, Gabe, you have earned them. Congratulations. Thank you guys.
Speaker 1: That is just what my apartment's missing. Yeah all right,
Speaker 1: well that's gonna do it for today's Part Time Genius.
Speaker 1: It's so great to have you back on the program, Gave.
Speaker 1: If you like our little show out there, please be
Speaker 1: sure to subscribe with the I heart Radio app, Apple podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you go to hear weird facts and maybe
Speaker 1: leave us a rating or review that would really make
Speaker 1: our year. From Will, Gave, Little and Me, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for listening, Have a wonderful holiday, and we'll
Speaker 1: see you in the new year. Part Time Genius is
Speaker 1: a production of I heart Rate. For more podcasts from
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Speaker 1: podcast or wherever you listen to your favorite show. H