In “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” twelve drummers drumming are given.
The drummers appear as the twelfth and final gift in the most familiar modern version of the cumulative carol. Each verse adds a new gift and then repeats the earlier gifts in descending order, so the twelfth verse ends with twelve drummers drumming, followed by eleven pipers piping, ten lords a-leaping, and the rest of the list.
The song is older than its best-known arrangement. Early versions differ in wording and sometimes reorder the final gifts; some historical versions also replace drummers with entirely different performers. These variations explain why printed lyrics from different eras do not always match perfectly. The standard version used in contemporary English-language Christmas singing, however, gives twelve drummers.
The song may also be associated with a memory-and-forfeits game in which players recited the increasingly long verses and paid a penalty for mistakes. Another frequently asked detail is the total number of gifts delivered across all verses: because earlier gifts repeat, the cumulative total is 364, not merely 78 unique items.