Think what you want about the song, 12 Days of Christmas, but as for my husband and I we celebrate them with a passion.
To begin you and I will need to think about what days each activity is leading up to. The original words were thought to be earlier than 1700s and it isn’t clear if it was for mischievous children, or for children to learn the catechism in the Catholic Church. The 2nd is how we celebrate it. Next, we know that the 12th day is celebrated as the day before the Epiphany (All Kings Day). This was the suggested time that the kings visited Jesus. Back then, there were only 10 months but January 6 was around the time that the Kings did indeed visit the Christ child when He was 2 years old. I often hear people disregard Christmas as a pagan holiday stating that the Christians chose to celebrate Christ at this time, where it was actually celebrated just in a different way than it is now.
On the 1st Day of Christmas my true love gave to me the Partridge in a pear tree. Obviously it is the birth of Jesus which actually would have happened in about mid-April. The reasons for the partridge is that it is an unlikely (does not fly) bird to be in any tree, especially a pear tree (this is a royal tree, most poor people would not have had one).
2nd day of Christmas is two turtle doves. As some see these as love birds they also have the symbol of friends. The movie, Home Alone 2, shows the symbol of the friendship of these two birds when he gives his new friend (the homeless women) a dove and he took the other.
3rd day of Christmas was 3 french hens: love, hope, and joy. (some people say peace rather than joy). 1 Corinthians 13:13 states, ‘now these three remain, faith, hope and love; but the greatest of these is love.’ The faith of God leads to joy in our spirits as we know that because of His grace, we can live with Him even after our earthly death.
4th day of Christmas is the 4 Colley Birds. Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. God allowed the 4 of them taken from 4 different sights (tax collector, evangelist, doctor and fisherman) to experience the birth, life and resurrection of His son. In these chapters we see how the Son of Man was born, how he lived, how he died and how he came back to life.
5th day of Christmas celebrates the Torah (the 1st 5 books of the Bible). It shows us that because of these 5 books, the premises of God’s son was able to happen.