Why Are Robins on Christmas Cards? The Victorian Postman Link

The Victorian postman connection

The story begins with the British postal system. In 1840 the Uniform Penny Post made sending a letter cheap for ordinary people, and in 1843 Sir Henry Cole commissioned the first commercial Christmas card, designed by John Callcott Horsley. Over the following decades, cheaper color printing turned Christmas cards into a mass-market product, and by the 1860s and 1870s sending them had become a national habit.

At the same time, postmen became a familiar sight on every street, especially in the busy weeks before Christmas. Victorian postmen wore red coats or waistcoats as part of their uniform, and people nicknamed them “robins” or “redbreasts” after the bird. Card designers seized on the idea. Many early cards showed a robin with an envelope in its beak, a robin knocking at a door, or a robin dressed as a postman, delivering the card itself.

Later the postmen’s uniform changed, but the robin had already become a fixture of Christmas imagery. The bird has appeared on cards, wrapping paper, cake decorations and Royal Mail Christmas stamps ever since.

Why the European robin fitted Christmas so well

The postman joke explains how robins got onto cards, but the bird itself helped it stay there. Several facts about the European robin make it a natural winter symbol:

• It stays all winter. Most British and Irish robins are resident, and many robins from Scandinavia and eastern Europe arrive to spend the winter in Britain. When many other songbirds have gone quiet or left, robins are still around.
• It sings in December. Both male and female robins hold territories in winter and sing to defend them, so the robin is one of very few birds heard singing at Christmas. Its winter song is softer and more wistful than the spring version.
• Its red breast stands out. Against snow, holly and bare branches, the orange-red breast is one of the few bright colors in a winter garden.
• It is tame. British robins come close to people, hop around gardeners and visit bird tables. That made the robin feel like a friendly household companion rather than a distant wild animal.

Folklore behind the Christmas robin

Long before Christmas cards, the robin was a special bird in British folklore. A well-known Christian legend says the robin was once plain brown, and that it flew to Jesus on the cross to comfort him; a drop of his blood stained its breast red forever. In another story, a robin fanned the flames of a fire to keep the infant Jesus warm in the stable and scorched its breast.

In Welsh tradition the robin carried water to souls suffering in the fires of hell, and was scorched red by the flames. In the old English tale of the Babes in the Wood, robins cover two lost children with leaves. These stories gave the bird a gentle, kindly reputation, and people in Britain traditionally considered it unlucky to harm a robin or disturb its nest.

None of these legends has anything to do with biology, of course. Both sexes of robin have the red breast, and it mainly works as a warning signal to rival robins rather than as decoration.

Is the Christmas robin really so gentle?

The friendly image on cards hides a fierce little bird. Robins are among the most territorial birds in Europe. In winter, each robin defends its own feeding patch, chasing off intruders with song, puffed-out breast displays and, if needed, fights. Some fights end in death, and in some study areas territorial clashes cause up to about 10 percent of adult robin deaths.

The ornithologist David Lack, who studied robins for years in Devon, showed that a territorial robin would attack a stuffed robin, and even a tuft of red breast feathers on a wire. So the red breast on a Christmas card is, from another robin’s point of view, a challenge.

Robins, Christmas and national pride

The robin’s festive role helped it become Britain’s best-loved bird. In the 1960s it topped a poll publicized by The Times, and in 2015 it won a national vote for Britain’s favorite bird again, with 34 percent of the final vote. It is often called the UK’s unofficial national bird.

In North America the situation is different. The American robin is a much larger thrush that many Americans see as a sign of spring, not winter. On American Christmas cards the bright red northern cardinal more often plays the role of the festive bird.

How to see a Christmas robin

You do not need to go far. In Britain and Ireland robins live in most gardens, parks, churchyards and woods. In midwinter look for one perched low on a fence or shrub, often fluffed up into a ball against the cold. Listen for the thin, silvery winter song from first light and sometimes even after dark near street lights, a habit explained in why do robins sing at night?.