I got curious to see if St. Francis might have been the first advocate of bird feeding as an active thing so I did a little poking around. In the United States the things I've looked at attribute the practice to Henry David Thoreau who fed birds. But the same sources point to a St. Serf of Fife in Scotland in the 6th Century, credited with taming a pigeon by feeding it. Since most of the stuff that is known about St. Serf would seem to be on the same level as the biography of Paul Bunyan, though more environmentally friendly, that could be apocryphal as well. The account I posted the other day about St. Francis advocating feeding the birds at Christmas was at least from someone who knew him.
It probably doesn't matter who did it first, not as important as feeding the birds and protecting them and their habitat. Some sources noted that the Mosaic law includes a requirement for leaving land fallow as a source of food for birds and other wild animals and kind treatment of animals, in general. This webpage has a lot on it that made me happy to see. That part of the Bible needs a lot of promoting.
I think feeding the birds as a Christmas observance needs to be promoted. Maybe giving bird seed as a Christmas present should be promoted. It would be a lot more enjoyable to watch the birds eating than it would be to have another superfluous and tacky Christmas decoration to have to take down the week after Christmas or regifted unused.
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