I'm sure you have all heard of the 12 Days of Christmas song.

It's the holiday equivalent of 99 bottles of beer on the wall

and no one ever sings it to completion because it's so long.

But it does raise the question, what are the 12 days of Christmas?

Why are there 12? And why am I doing an episode on this in January well after Christmas is over?

Learn the answers to these questions on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. This episode is sponsored by audible.com.

Today's audiobook recommendation is The Santa Claus Man,

The Rise and Fall of a Jazz Age Con Man and the invention of Christmas in New York by

Alex Palmer.

Before the charismatic John Duval Guck Jr. came along, letters from New York children

to Santa Claus were destroyed

unopened by the U.S. Post Office.

Gluck saw an opportunity and created the Santa Claus Association.

The effort delighted the public and for 15 years money and gifts flowed to the only group

authorized to enter Santa's mail. The rise and fall of the Santa Claus Association

is a caper both heartwarming and hard-boiled involving stolen art, phony Boy Scouts, a kidnapping pursuit by the

FBI and a Coney Island bullfight.

You can get a free one-month trial to Audible and two free audio books by going to

Audible Trial.com slash everything everywhere or by

clicking on the link in the show notes. There are a lot of misconceptions

about the 12 days of Christmas.

That's mainly because we no longer celebrate the 12 days of Christmas,

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