We all know by now that robins are outright beasts. Philip Hoare called our red-breasted national bird – re-elected to the post in 2015 – a “vicious, murdering bully”, and he wasn’t wrong: robins are belligerent, petty and brutally confrontational birds (Hoare noted that 10% of all adult robin deaths are “robin-on-robin incidents”, and they will go after other species too). Of course, this kind of behaviour is just a function of the robin’s evolved nature; it doesn’t mean to be a blood-soaked thug, and we can’t blame it for being one. All I’ll say is, I don’t think territorial murder is very Christmassy.

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It’s too late, alas, to unseat the robin as the UK’s flagship bird, but I do think it’s high time we had a talk about putting it on our Christmas cards.

A story about how the robin first became ubiquitous in our festive imagery because of an association with the red-coated Victorian postmen nicknamed “robins” sounds too neat to be true, but more or less is (some early cards depicted robins carrying letters in their beaks). Robins already had folkloric connections with Christianity and an ancient – perhaps even pre-Christian – place in our winter iconography. They cornered the Christmas market early doors and continue to wield a degree of marketing clout a Starbucks red cup can only dream of. It’s time for someone else to challenge the monopoly.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘Redwings gather together for garrulous seasonal feasts of hawthorn and rosehip.’ Photograph: FLPA/Alamy

If we want a handsome songbird that stands out in the snow, what about the redwing? This dapper little thrush arrives from the far north in late autumn and with its bold vermilion armpit imparts a dash of festive colour to the rural winterscape. Unlike the robin – which in winter, like Ebenezer Scrooge, is “solitary as an oyster” – redwings gather together for garrulous seasonal feasts of hawthorn and rosehip.

It’s true that a robin can look reasonably adorable when it’s fluffing up its plumage against the cold – as opposed to when, say, it’s trying to sever a rival’s spinal cord with its beak. But does it look as adorable as a party of long-tailed tits, each a grey, pink and white fluffball barely bigger than a brussels sprout, tinkling and flittering in the holly-tops? Or a dinky goldcrest doing acrobatics on a low-hanging pine branch? All of these birds would supply the awww-factor demanded by Christmas taste-makers, and without the robin’s tiresome look-at-me neediness.

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Some would say that songbirds get too much attention as it is, just because they can whistle a few notes and swing on a peanut-feeder. As an outsider candidate in this vein I’d suggest the woodcock, a portly, retiring country squire of a bird that in this country is synonymous with rustic winter woodlands. Or, as we’re at least nominally a maritime nation, we could look to our December shores, which host outlandishly big Christmas get-togethers of wading birds. They might not be decked out in their finery – they save that for the spring – but you can’t say that golden plover, grey plover, dunlin, knot and black-tailed godwit aren’t entering into the party spirit when the guest-list on the frigid sands of Frodsham Marsh or the Dee Estuary might stretch to many thousands of birds.

But maybe we’re not quite ready for a godwit on a Christmas card or a woodcock on a novelty necktie or a long-tailed tit behind an advent calendar door. One of the reasons for the robin’s ubiquity, after all, is its high recognition factor. Everyone knows what a robin looks like.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest ‘The wren can be gobby at times (but can’t we all, after the third or fourth Christmas snifter?)’ Photograph: Mark Hamblin/Getty Images/Photolibrary RM

So my vote goes to another familiar bird: the wren, known to the Dutch as the “winter-king”. It’s true that the wren can be gobby at times (but can’t we all, after that third or fourth Christmas snifter?). But it outdoes the robin on every festive metric: it’s cuter, it’s less murderous, and its song is both ear-splittingly loud and irrepressibly high-spirited. Like the robin, it sings all through the wintertime, but as the bird writer David Bannerman put it, “the robin is often pensive, and sings… as though he sympathised with us. But the wren never sings except to say that it is the best of all possible worlds.”

And like us, wrens gather together for warmth: a wren roost is a cosy bundle of avian hygge that might include as many as 50 or 60 snuggling birds (with the whole lot together weighing no more than a plum pudding). Now that’s a bird that belongs on a Christmas card. It’s time to chase the robin off this territory. Just do it carefully, and watch out for your spinal cord.

• Richard Smyth is the author of A Sweet, Wild Note: What We Hear When the Birds Sing.