The Christmas Goose

Tales of the Goose in History and Tradition, or How the Goose Came to be a Traditional Christmas Feast

Sep 27, 2006 Rosemary Drisdelle

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.

Related articles:

Canada Goose

A Weckmann, Lanterns and Children's Singing on St. Martin's Day!

Other content about Christmas and birds:

A Partridge in a Pear Tree

The Christmas Bird Count

A Christmas Idea for Birders

Wild turkey, Christmas Turkey

The copyright of the article The Christmas Goose in Birds is owned by Rosemary Drisdelle. Permission to republish The Christmas Goose in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

Canada Goose

Comments

Sep 28, 2006 8:26 AM

Rosemary Drisdelle :

Do you know of other goose legends or traditions from anywhere or any time? We can collect them here.

Dec 17, 2006 5:10 PM

Richly :

Here's one:
There was once a man who didn't believe in God, and he didn't hesitate to let others know how he felt about religion and religious holidays, like Christmas. His wife, however, did believe, and she raised their children to also have faith in God and Jesus, despite his disparaging comments.
One snowy Christmas Eve, his wife was taking their children to a Christmas Eve service in the farm community in which they lived. She asked him to come, but he refused.
"That story is nonsense!" he said. "Why would God lower Himself to come to Earth as a man? That's ridiculous!" So she and the children left, and he stayed home.
A while later, the winds grew stronger and the snow turned into a blizzard. As the man looked out the window, all he saw was a blinding snowstorm. He sat down to relax before the fire for the evening. Then he heard a loud thump. Something had hit the window. Then another thump. He looked out, but couldn't see more than a few feet.
When the snow let up a little, he ventured outside to see what could have been beating on his window. In the field near his house he saw a flock of wild geese. Apparently they had been flying south for the winter when they got caught in the snowstorm and couldn't go on. They were lost and stranded on his farm, with no food or shelter. They just flapped their wings and flew around the field in low circles, blindly and aimlessly. A couple of them had flown into his window, it seemed.

The man felt sorry for the geese and wanted to help them. The barn would be a great place for them to stay, he thought. It's warm and safe; surely they could spend the night and wait out the storm. So he walked over to the barn and opened the doors wide, then watched and waited, hoping they would notice the open barn and go inside.
The geese just fluttered around aimlessly and didn't seem to notice the barn or realize what it could mean for them. The man tried to get their attention, but that just seemed to scare them and they moved further away. He went into the house and came back out with some bread, broke it up, and made a breadcrumbs trail leading to the barn, but they still didn't catch on.
Now he was getting frustrated. He got behind them and tried to shoo them toward the barn, but they only got more scared and scattered in every direction except toward the barn. Nothing he did could get them to go into the barn where they would be warm and safe.
"Why don't they follow me?!" he exclaimed. "Can't they see t

Dec 18, 2006 4:31 AM

Rosemary Drisdelle :

Thank you for that. It's a beautiful story.

3 Comments