Black skies, the crunch of snow underfoot, breath puffing out in a cloud on the icy air, the smell of chestnuts roasting, candlelight and, to complete the picture, voices raised in harmony singing age-old carols. It’s a wonderful sight and sound; one of my favourite elements of the holiday season.

I live part of the year in England, and part in France, which means I am most familiar with the French/English carol ‘The Twelve Days of Christmas’. No doubt you’ve heard it, and wondered at the strangeness of the gifts. The gold rings would be rather nice, but a partridge in a pear tree…?

In the English version of the song, which is something of a game for children in remembering the cumulative gifts for each reiteration of the verse, on each of the twelve days from Christmas Day an extravagant gift is given, until:

On the twelfth day of Christmas, my true love gave to me…

12 drummers drumming

11 pipers piping

10 lords-a-leaping

9 ladies dancing

8 maids-a-milking

7 swans-a-swimming

6 geese-a-laying

5 gold rings

4 colly birds [not calling birds, as commonly sung; a colly bird is a blackbird]

3 French hens

2 turtle doves

and a partridge in a pear tree.

But the carol, thought of as traditional English one dating back to the eighteenth century, has its roots in two French songs:

* ‘La Foi de la loi’, in which the gifts are a good stuffing without bones, two breasts of veal, three joints of beef, four pigs’ trotters, five legs of mutton, six partridges with cabbage, seven spitted rabbits, eight plates of salad, nine dishes for a chapter of canons, ten full casks, eleven beautiful full-breasted maidens and twelve musketeers with their swords.

* ‘Le premier jour d’l’an’, in which the gifts are one lone partridge, two turtle-doves, three wooden branches, four ducks flying in the air, five rabbits running on the ground, six running dogs, seven windmills, eight chewing cows, nine horned bulls, ten white pigeons, eleven silver plates and twelve crowing cockerels.

Which gifts would you prefer of the three versions of the song? Personally, I’d go for something like:

12 romance novels

11 hampers of chocolate

10 round-world cruises

9 Piers Brosnan butlers

8 boxes at the ballet

7 glasses of champagne

6 Jimmy Choos

5 gold rings

4 silk scarves

3 tins of caviar

2 jazz quartets

and a diamond bauble on the Christmas tree.

With such complicated lyrics, it is no wonder children get so confused singing the song in their Christmas pageants. There’s a wonderful version of this song available on YouTube sung by the a cappella group Straight No Chaser that embodies this confusion created by the complicated list – well worth a watch!