The Twelve Days of Christmas: 4

On the fourth day of Christ­mas, my true love gave to me: four call­ing birds.

“There they are,” said my true love, guid­ing me to the win­dow and point­ing at the four sil­hou­ettes perched on the stone wall at the end of our garden. “Black­birds. They’re nest­ing nearby, I’m sure of it. I’ve been put­ting out bread for them. I’ve almost adop­ted them.”

I nar­rowed my eyes and stared.

“But black­birds are unlucky,” I replied, with a note of panic sound­ing in my voice. “We can’t have black­birds in our garden. Ima­gine the hor­rors that might befall us.”

“No, you’re think­ing of crows and ravens. They’re the omens of death and divine provid­ence, not blackbirds.”

My true love kissed me good­bye, remind­ing me to put out some bread­crumbs later in the day. I stood star­ing at the black­birds. I couldn’t see their eyes clearly, but I’m sure they were star­ing back at me in an omin­ous, deathly and divinely provid­en­tial way.

Accord­ing to the sixth cen­tury writ­ings of Pope Gregory I, the beau­ti­ful song of the black­bird makes it a sym­bol of tempta­tion — espe­cially sexual tempta­tion. In the fifth cen­tury, the Devil appeared before St Bene­dict of Nur­sia in the shape of a black­bird, fly­ing around his head so closely that the creature was almost within Benedict’s grasp. Fol­low­ing this encounter, Bene­dict was troubled by a “viol­ent tempta­tion of the flesh” for a girl he had once seen. In order to save him­self, he tore off all his clothes and jumped into a nearby bush of thorns and nettles, lacer­at­ing his whole body. This pain­ful act is said to have freed him from sexual tempta­tion for the rest of his life.

The morn­ing mists were clear­ing, and it looked like it was going to turn into a fine, bright day. With free time on my hands, it seemed like a good moment to do some garden­ing. As the black­birds looked on, I picked up my prun­ing shears and began cut­ting the rose bush right back to the hard, cruel thorns. Just in case.

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