When Ives compiled his 114 Songs in 1921 he often transformed earlier projects into songs. This was the case of a choral song he wrote in 1913 for unison chorus and orchestra of brass and winds, December, Ky 32 in John Kirkpatrick's catalog of Ives' works.

The text was a translation by Dante Gabriel Rossetti's 1893 book Dante and His Circle, which for some reason Ives cited as "Rossetti's 'Early Italian Poets'" on the title pages. The original text was from the set of sonnets called Mesi by Folgore da San Geminiano (ca. 1250 - 1317). The series is full of descriptions of upper-class life in Italy during that part of the Medieval era.

Ives' song is harmonically free but not radical, though it uses no bar lines or key signature. It is a sparkling and pleasureful work.

It pictures December as a time for eating and gift-giving. The well-to-do enjoy a roaring fire, and fur-lined robes (in which they go off pretending to be vagabonds to collect their gifts). The music is in a quick tempo. The chords used tend to be ordinary triads, but they shift from one tonality to another with remarkable rapidity, and uses whole-fist tone clusters near the end.

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