TWELVE DAYS OF CHRISTMAS

Depending on what day you start with, the Twelve Days of Christmas end tonight (Old Christmas Eve) or tomorrow (aka Little or Old Christmas or "The Feast of the Three Kings" or Epiphany). In many Hispanic countries this Feast Day is the day to receive gifts, rather than at Christmas. Some other international Twelfth Night customs include a cake with a good luck token inside.

Most of us, though, connect the Twelve Days of Christmas with the song. Recently, it has become a yearly tradition to figure out the actual cost of the gifts in the song according to current prices--it's usually more each year.

It's also a song that lends itself to humor, especially parodies. Some accessible online include:
The Australian 12 Days of Christmas
The Hawaiian 12 Days of Christmas
A Jakarta 12 Days of Christmas
Mid North Coast (Australia) 12 Days of Christmas--compiled from suggestions by listeners of the local radio station
Darwin, Australia 12 Days of Christmas--also listener suggestions
A Redneck 12 Days of Christmas
A Puppy's 12 Days of Christmas
A Guinea Pig's 12 Days of Christmas
7 Days of Flu
Alan Sherman's famous 12 Days of Christmas
A Post-Katrina 12 Days of Christmas

There are also a couple of "story" versions about the effect of the cumulative gifts on the recipient:
The Sara Truelove Letters
A Cajun 12 Days of Christmas

There are a few sites for children with games and color pages:
12 Days Christmas Village
DLTK Color Pages
Enchanted Learning 12 Days Rebus
12 Days Drag-n-Drop Game--relates to customs in other countries

The Youth Services Department at the Elk Grove Library has several picture books depicting variations on the basic "12 Days of Christmas" (as well as several straight-forward versions). Among them are:
The Twelve Days of Christmas Dogs by Carolyn Conahan
Twelve Days of Christmas Presents by Emily Bolam
The Twelve Days of Christmas: A Feline Classic by Don Daily
The Twelve Days of Christmas: A Song Rebus by Emily Bolam
A Bellbird in a Flame Tree: The Twelve Days of Christmas by Kilmeny Niland
Disney's Doug Twelve Days of Christmas by Linda K. Garvey
Twelve Lizards Leaping: A New Twelve Days of Christmas by Jan Romero Stevens
Twelve Days by Gordon Snell
Blue's 12 Days of Christmas by Catherine Lukas
A Firefly in a Fir Tree Hilary Knight
My Christmas Safari Fran Manushkin

Most of these books are shelved in the Holiday section, not in the general Easy Books shelving area.