Christmas pre-tinsel: when plants — and robins — ran the show

Unlike many birds, robins remain active through winter, defending territories and singing even on the shortest days of the year. Their presence in bleak winter gardens made them symbols of cheer and continuity.

Strip Christmas of its baubles, batteries and Amazon deliveries, and what you’re left with is, at heart, a festival of plants. Trees dragged indoors. Mistletoe hung from the ceiling. Berries admired but (wisely) not eaten.

Even our most beloved Christmas bird, the robin, owes its festive status not to religion, but to gardening, frost, and Victorian guilt.