By the garden gate, a bundle of oats – and a small act of generosity older than the Christmas tree
In December, somewhere in Denmark, a bundle of golden oat straw gets carried out the back door and tied to a pole. The Danes call it a juleneg – a Christmas sheaf, or simply fugleneg, the bird sheaf. Kernels still clinging to the heads, hung up for the small birds and for the humans watching from the kitchen window. No lights, no greenery, no glitter. Just straw, string, and a great deal of grey winter light behind it.
Older than the Christmas tree
It is much older than the tree. The written trail begins in the first half of the 1700s. Eighteenth-century clergymen condemned it as heathen, which usually means it predates them comfortably.
Gratitude for the harvest
Before it was a Christmas decoration, it came in from the harvest. The last sheaf of the year was sometimes tied as a person and named – because the spirit of the grain was believed to take refuge in whatever was left standing last. In some places that final sheaf was given to the birds outright.
The Christmas sheaf was often the last thing made in the autumn, held back and hung out when the year turned.
It is tempting to call that gratitude, and today it more or less is. But the older logic is fertility – a sheaf is a bundle of kernels, each carrying next year’s plant inside it, and giving it away paid one summer’s abundance forward into the next. A gift with an expectation attached.
Not quite a bird feeder
Worth knowing: it is not really a feeding station. A bundle of oats holds few kernels, and it is mostly sparrows picking up what shakes loose and falls below. A proper feeder does far more good. But nobody who hangs one seems troubled. It is done for the feeling – the small ceremony of going out in the garden, and leaving something behind for the creatures who will be out in it.
Hanging your own
To hang your own: find unthreshed oat straw (a florist, farm shop or museum shop may have it in December), tie a tight band of twine a hand’s width from the top, hang it at eye level on a pole or post where cats can’t reach and rain won’t rot it.
A small offering – a sign of abundance and plenty – and gratitude – and the value of sharing.