The Truth About 12 Days of Christmas

For years, a very popular story has floated around, especially on the internet,

that this song was actually a secret code used by English Catholics. The theory says

they used the gifts, like the two turtle doves representing the Old and New Testaments,

to secretly teach their faith when they weren't allowed to practice it openly. It's a cool spy

movie-like story, right? But here's the scoop. Historians and fact-checkers like Snopes have

found no proof that this is true. The code idea seems to be a modern invention that popped up in

the 1990s. Most experts agree the song started around the late 1700s as a simple

children's memory game played at parties. The first known printed version was in a book called