By Isla Quinn
Red breast. Black eye. A small round bird on a spade handle in December. You know the picture before you finish reading the line.
Three sources, all from bodies that know their birds or their post, tell us how it got onto the card. They agree on most of it. They disagree on one colour.
Where Christmas cards came from
The Postal Museum starts with the stamp. Before the Penny Post in 1840, it says, postage was complex and expensive and usually paid by the person receiving the letter. After 1840 a letter or card was paid for in advance with a stamp, the Penny Black, and cost one penny. A local RSPB group’s blog gives the same year and the same price. The museum dates the first commercial Christmas card to 1843 and says Sir Henry Cole created it. The blog gives 1843 for the invention of the Christmas card.
Early cards, it says, were costly, printed on one side and about the size of a business card. Printers of Valentine’s cards made most of them at first, so many showed romantic pictures and not festive ones. Cheaper printing arrived in the 1860s, and by the 1870s sending cards was firmly established as a British habit.
The postman’s nickname
Here is the story. Victorian postmen, the Postal Museum says, were nicknamed “Robins” because their bright red jackets and waistcoats were such a familiar sight. The RSPB group blog says it more flatly: postmen already wore red uniforms and had the nickname, and many illustrators showed a robin delivering a Christmas card in its beak. The Scottish Wildlife Trust adds a second name, “redbreast,” and says artists began drawing the bird delivering letters in place of the postmen.
The Postal Museum is the careful one. It calls the nickname a legend. It points to the novelist Anthony Trollope, himself a Post Office employee, whose 1860 novel Framley Parsonage has characters call the local postman a “Robin Postman”. That is a dated, printed use of the phrase, and the best evidence any of the three gives. The museum also notes that the nickname has not stuck to postal workers, though images of robins delivering messages, often beside pillar boxes, have lasted.
The colour problem
The same museum describes the postman’s formal uniform as a blue frockcoat with red piping and gold buttons, worn with a double-peaked shako hat bearing a “GPO” badge. A card from about 1860 to 1890, shown in the same article, has a Mail Coach Guard in a red frockcoat and top hat.
So the sources do not agree. The RSPB blog and the wildlife trust say red uniforms. The museum’s legend says red jackets and waistcoats, and its own description of the formal uniform is blue with red trim. We do not resolve this. Our reading: red may have been what people remembered, from the guards, the piping or the waistcoats, and the museum’s cautious word “legend” may be the right one. That is our inference and none of the three says it.
A different explanation
The museum also records that some people think the robin appears simply because it is a familiar bird in winter. The RSPB blog backs that up in its way: robins sing through the winter and are naturally tame, so they are a noticeable presence in gardens in December. The wildlife trust says robin numbers rise in winter, when migrants from Scandinavia, Russia and Europe join resident birds because their own winters are too cold and food is scarce. Native UK robins, it says, usually move only short distances between breeding and winter territories. It adds that robins are very territorial, may fight to death over territory, and are less shy around people, so they are often hand-fed in gardens.
Two of the sources also tell religious legends about the red breast. We leave these aside; they are stories about meaning and we have no documents for them.
Red, still
The RSPB blog says Royal Mail vans and post boxes are still red and attributes this to Victorian branding. That is a one-line claim from a bird charity’s local group, not a postal history, and we have not seen the sources behind it. It also says robins were voted the avian symbol of Great Britain in a national poll, and gives no date or vote figures.
Dates in order
- 1840: the Penny Post and the Penny Black, according to the Postal Museum and the RSPB group blog.
- 1843: the first commercial Christmas card, according to the Postal Museum.
- 1860: Trollope’s “Robin Postman” in Framley Parsonage, according to the Postal Museum.
- 1860s: cheaper printing, according to the Postal Museum.
- 1870s: cards firmly established, according to the Postal Museum.
Side by side
The Postal Museum calls the postman story a legend and gives a blue-and-red uniform. The RSPB group blog and the Scottish Wildlife Trust state it as fact and say red. The museum and the RSPB blog agree on 1843, and all three on the idea that illustrators put the robin in the postman’s place. The wildlife trust gives a natural reason for the bird’s winter visibility and says nothing about the postmen being the cause.
What kind of sources these are
A national postal museum’s blog, a local group’s blog on the RSPB’s site, and a regional wildlife charity’s article. We did not use Wikipedia for this piece. None is a primary document; the only primary evidence mentioned is Trollope’s 1860 novel, and we have not read it.
Questions a buyer would ask
Looking for a card, a decoration or a print with a robin? Ask who drew or printed it and when, and whether the seller’s story about the postmen is offered as a legend or as fact. A seller who says “Victorian” should be able to say which decade. We make no claim about any particular item.
What we left out
The religious legends, the older stories about holly and winter, and the question of how many robins are in Britain, which our sources do not give. We also left out prices and any named card maker.
Quick answers
Why are there robins on Christmas cards? According to the Postal Museum, a legend says Victorian postmen were nicknamed Robins for their red jackets. It adds that some think the robin simply appears because it is a familiar winter bird.
When was the first Christmas card? The Postal Museum says Sir Henry Cole created the first commercial Christmas card in 1843, three years after the Penny Post began.
Why do more robins appear in winter? The Scottish Wildlife Trust says migrants from Scandinavia, Russia and Europe join resident robins when winters are too cold and food is scarce at home.
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Roam first. Shop later.