By Sydney Yancey
“On The First Day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree.”
Prayer for Christmas
Eternal God, by the birth of Jesus Christ you gave yourself to the world. Grant that, being born in our hearts, he may save us from all our sins, and restore within us the image and likeness of our Creator, to whom be everlasting praise and glory, world without end. Amen.
-Laurence Hull Stookey, The United Methodist Hymnal #231
“On the first day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, a partridge in a pear tree”. In the past, I have listened to this song and wondered who this “true love” was and why they gave so many strange gifts to the narrator. It turns out that each day in the song is actually symbolic of an integral part of our Christian faith and the partridge in the pear tree that we sing about 12 times in the song represents Jesus. This connection makes sense because according to the liturgical calendar Jesus’ birthday, celebrated on December 25th, is the first day of the 12 days leading up to the Epiphany. However, it goes deeper than that. According to Dennis Bratcher, the song specifically uses a partridge because a mother partridge will lay her life down for her young. She will do whatever she needs to when a predator threatens her babies’ safety even if that means being injured herself. This creature with a natural inclination toward sacrificial love is placed on a tree, just as our savior was. As you celebrate Jesus’ birth today, take a moment to step away from the craziness this time of year can bring into our lives and think about what his birth means for you. As Laurence Hull Stookey writes in his Christmas prayer, Jesus gives us the ultimate gift by restoring in us “the image and likeness of our Creator”. We are made right with God through Jesus’ sacrificial love. He chose to love us in such an active and personal way that when we recognize it, our spirits feel deeply inclined to give God “everlasting praise and glory”. How will you give God that praise and glory today?