So it is that time of the year: most of us are in a rush to purchase Christmas presents for our loved ones, perhaps taking advantage of the vast of amount of discounts stores are offering to entice us to buy. This is also the time where Christmas Carols are sung, even played 24/7 on some radio stations. Where I live (Azusa, CA which is about 25 miles east of Los Angeles, or Dodgertown for the baseball fans), I know of two stations that are all-Holiday music all the time until Christmas.
Chances are that you have heard about the "12 Days of Christmas" sung by about every recording artist that's ever lived (at least in America). The song was originally published around 1780 and came to the United States about 1910. The song tells about a very generous person give his/her true love presents for each day of Christmas. The days of Christmas starts on December 25 (or 26 for some cultures), and the giving lasts for 12 days.
How may presents did the generous lover give his/her true love? It depends on how the gifts are counted.
Taking a literal count, we can say the true love received a total of three gifts: the doves AND another partridge in a pear tree.
However, some view each day as a summary of all the gifts after the new set of gifts were received. Hence, the true love received only the two doves because the true love was already given the partridge in a pear tree.
Some even count the partridge as one gift and the pear tree as another. For simplicity, I'll count the partridge in a pear tree as one gift.
To calculate the number of gifts given during the 12 Days of Christmas, it is only a matter of addition.
Add each pair of terms on the right side. Note that 2 + (n-1) = n+1, 3 + (n-2) = n+1, and so on.
Observe that there are n terms of (n+1) on the right side.
We'll use this formula to help us count the number of presents.
If each day the lucky recipient merely recaps what he/she has received to that day, then the number of gifts the person gets is 78.
Note there is no mention to what exactly the maids were milking but I digress.
A popular view to find the number of gifts is to make a literal count. That means each time the singer person sings about what he/she got from his/her true love actually was received. From this perspective, after the 12 Days of Christmas were over, the person actually got a total of 12 partridges in pear trees, along with 22 turtle doves, and so on. Hopefully the person has a big yard to fit all the pear trees, the turtle doves, a lake for all the geese, and many rooms to house the maids, ladies, lords, pipers, and drummers.
Let's calculate the total shall we?
This has got to cost the true love a fortune!
The grand total of all the gifts were 364. I can only imagine that the last few days busy the person and the true love.
Here is a link that has the lyrics of "The Twelve Days of Christmas".
Happy Holidays everyone! Merry Christmas! May this month (and all months thereafter) find you peace, love, warmth, and gratitude!
We worked it out many years ago as 602 presents as you have left off the less known presents from the list. Maids a milking must have Cows, Buckets and Milking Stalls. Swans a Swimming must have a pond or lake to swim on, and Drummers Drumming must have Drums and Drumsticks.
12 Partridges 12 Pear Trees for example where you only list the partridge and Not the Pear Tree it has to be in to comply and is also a present.
Geese a laying must have Eggs to comply.
Eggs on following days from the previous geese are not included as they were not given but resulting from previous gifts. There will be no pears left on the pear trees in December.