Season's tweetings

Jolly frock-coated robins, majestic geese and arboreal partridges make for both literal and symbolic centrepieces at Christmas, says Matthew Dennison, as he revels in the cultural history of the season's feathered fowl and game

- By Matthew Dennison

KINDNESS is the cause of the robin's red breast in one traditional story, in which robins in the stable at Bethlehem fanned the flames of a fire to warm the baby in the manger and, in doing so, scorched their feathers. For the most part, British birds of Christmas owe their festive associations to more local customs, including culinary traditions. Perennially popular, The Twelve Days of Christmas, sung by children and carollers, keeps a place in our hearts for partridges and turtle doves, associated with devotion and loving friendship—despite the unlikelihood of town-dwelling urban revellers encountering either of these birds. Other native birds have come to symbolise Christmas on account of their visibility in December's cold, wet landscapes; the magic of this time of year makes it all possible.

Seeing red

At the heart of the traditional English ballad, The Babes in the Wood—more familiar today as the source of a pantomime plot—is a robin. In the poem, villainy triumphs, the 'babes' of the title die and there's scant material suitable for a festive family outing. Except, that is, for the robin, who alone among those in the wood acts with kindness towards the children: 'No burial this pretty pair/From any man receives/Till robin redbreast piously/Did cover them with leaves.'

Robins are bold, territorial, sometimes aggressive little birds, but their role in the popular mythology of these islands is consistently positive and their russet chest plumage—so vivid in the winter landscape—has won them an enduring place in British Christmases. For the Anglo-Saxons they were rudducs, in acknowledgement of their ruddy colouring; later generations preferred to regard the robin's breast feathers as red and 'Redbreast' remained the birds' official name for the British Ornithologists' Union until the 1950s.