The First Day of Christmas

 On The First Day of Christmas My Father gave to me . . . 
Why a “partridge in a pear tree?” According to the Christmas website

“A partridge in a pear tree” is the symbol for Jesus Christ. This symbol is used because a mother partridge will appear to be injured when a predator is near to lure him away from her helpless chicks, representing the sacrifice she is willing to make. (http://noelnoelnoel.com/trad/12days.html)

This was new! I had never thought of the partridge as a Christ figure. The first gift God gave us was His son, Jesus Christ. “For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son.” (John 3:16) His sacrifice made it possible for us to return back to God, the perfect 1st gift.

Recently I have studied the symbolism of the hand with its five fingers. The first digit is the thumb. In his talk, “Hold up your Hands,” Sterling W. Sill talked about the hand and what each digit represented. He said the thumb is the anchor man to the hand and it represents the knowledge of God’s existence.

In symbology the number one represents God himself, the Creation, unity, order, omnipresence, eternity, etc. The shape is the point and the circle. The circle has three main parts, the point, circumference and radius. Each of these three parts represent the members of the Godhead. The point is God, himself, eternal, unlimited, with no beginning or end. The circumference represents the Holy Ghost, also unlimited (never ending, pi). The radius represents Christ, lighting the path (line) back to God. Just as Christ chose to be limited in mortality, to live within the bounds of birth and death, the radius has a beginning and an end. 

The thumb, the number one and the first gift in the song compliment each other. We can all agree that there is a God, that he created the earth and all of its inhabitants. He loves us and has given us the gift of His Son. Let us remember Him.