The Christmas Goose
Tales of the Goose in History and Tradition, or How the Goose Came to be a Traditional Christmas Feast
Roast goose didn't start with the Christian holiday of Christmas. Read about what geese symbolized in other religions and cultures as far back as ancient Egypt.
In A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens wrote that in the poor Cratchit household, "you might have thought a goose the rarest of all birds; a feathered phenomenon, to which a black swan was a matter of course -- and in truth it was something very like it in that house." In Victorian England, having goose for Christmas dinner was both an established tradition and a rare pleasure, but did the Cratchits know how far back the symbolism went? Here are some examples from history of the symbolism of the goose in human cultures:
- The goose was the sacred animal and symbol of the Egyptian god, Amen. Amen became the greatest of all the Egyptian gods by Dynasty XVIII and was believed to have been the source of all creation.
- About 389BC, a flock of geese sacred to Jupiter, Juno and Minerva, the gods of Rome, saved the Roman citadel by alerting sleeping Roman defenders to a stealth attack by the Gauls. Had the geese not raised the alarm, the history of the Roman empire might have ended then.
- The Jewish feast of Chanukah (Hanukkah), also known as the Feast of the Maccabees, is traditionally roast goose. The celebration commemorates the return of the temple in Jerusalem from Syrian to Jewish hands in about 165.
- Saint Martin of Tours, one of the best known Catholic Saints, is the patron saint against poverty and of, among other things, beggars and geese. Legend has it that he tore his cloak in half in order to give half of it to a beggar: the cloak was later miraculously restored. Later, he hid in a barn full of geese to avoid being made a Bishop, but the geese gave him away with their clamor. He died in about 367. Saint Martin's day is celebrated on November 11, and goose is the traditional fare on that day (Martinmas goose). If you see a painting of Saint Martin, he may well be accompanied by a goose.
- Though goose is still a popular choice for Christmas dinner in some places, Dickens may have started something new when he had Scrooge give the Cratchits, not a goose, but a turkey: "... a Turkey! He never could have stood upon his legs, that bird. He would have snapped them short off in a minute, like sticks of sealing-wax."
- The goose has a moral message in the famous Aesop's fable, "The Goose That laid the Golden Egg:" if you let your greed get out of control, you may lose everything.
We can't say exactly how the tradition of roast goose came into the celebration of Christmas, but doubtless it got picked up from other traditions and then became a hallmark of the Christian holiday. Sometimes by coincidence and sometimes by association the goose seems to have come with a theme: Ancient Egyptians, Romans, Jews, Christians, and many others have all heard the same message from the goose - a message just as relevant today as it ever was: be thankful.
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