Twelve Days of Catechisms

You may have seen the story going around that the Twelve Days of Christmas is a veiled catechism. A lot of things about that story don't make any sense at all. Fortunately I didn't have to do much research...

""The Twelve Days of Christmas" is what most people take it to be: a secular song that celebrates the Christmas season with imagery of gifts and dancing and music.[...]Nonetheless, plenty of writers continue to expound upon "the beauty and truly biblical and spiritual meanings locked away in this wonderful song that puts Christ into Christmas where he doesn't appear to be." Emphasizing that Christ is part of Christmas is a fine thing, but achieving that goal by inventing and spreading phony explanations about purely secular aspects of Christmas is not. And perhaps those who consider this tale (regardless of its literal truth) to be "beautiful" and "inspirational" should consider its underlying message: that one group of Jesus' followers had to hide their beliefs in order to avoid being tortured and killed by another group of Jesus' followers. Of all the aspects of Christianity to celebrate at Christmastime, should this really be one of them?"

From the moderately researched but exhaustively explicated debunking at Snopes.com