I just received another copy of the now notorious "12 Days of Christmas has hidden catechism reminders" via e-mail. Last year I did some research and found the catechism lessons which the song lyrics supposedly teach are from the Baltimore Catechism, which was not the catechism used at the time of the Catholic surpression--

However, it did get me to thinking that I had seen, once, somewhere, another explanation for the significance of each of the rather curious gifts, to the effect that they were elements in some tradtional pagent of some sort--anybody know anything about this?