The 12 Days of Christmas: A Quandary?

Ok, I realize I'm totally jumping past Thanksgiving and all, but I've queued up the Christmas music on the iPod at work and Emma' been listening to her Little People Christmas Carol CD in the car. I've even put up Christmas lights on the house!

Emma recently got a book: The 12 Days of Christmas. We've been reading it a lot, though I don't know why. It's a pretty boring book. Of course, we spice things up by singing it to her in an absurd voice. That makes it tolerable. Tonight, I was pondering the song and have found myself in a quandary:

For each day, did the true love give only 1 gift, or all the gifts over again? To rephrase...on the second day of Christmas, did the true love give the person 2 turtle doves AND a partridge in a pear tree? Or just 2 turtle doves? If the former holds true, then the true love dished out some SERIOUS gifts over those 12 days! Here's my breakdown:

12 - Partridges in a Pear Tree (same tree, or 12 different trees?)
22 - Turtle Doves
30 - French Hens (God, anything French greater than zero is insufferable!)
36 - Calling Birds
40 - Gold Rings (The True Love is BANKING to afford this!)
42 - Egg-laying Geese (and those geese are laying a bunch of poo, too!)
42 - Swimming Swans (I can image how icky the pool would be out back...)
40 - Milking Maids (apparently, the recipient already had the cows)
36 - Dancing Ladies (that'd be pretty cool, I guess)
30 - Lords a Leaping (leaving 6 Dancing Ladies without a Lord...very sad)
22 - Piper's Piping (mix this with the Lords & Ladies, and you have Riverdance)
12 - Drummers (to help with the Riverdance music, I assume)

In my opinion, that's just ridiculous. That true love person is flat out psychotic.


PS. If you'd like to know the true background of the song, you can read about it here. It's rooted in Catholic tradition (each day corresponds to a Christian value/belief/object).