On the first day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
A partridge in a pear tree.

To whom is refered "my true love" in these lyrics?

God.

More information

Hi mozart,

Please don't tell Zik, but the "true love" in the song is God !

The song dates back to the 16th century when Catholics were discriminated against for practicing their faith.
So Catholic children at that time could sing of their beliefs without the English knowing about it.
Each gift in the song symbolises some aspect of their faith.

It's all right. Snopes (Karrow's link) says the song is a forfeits game, not religious at all and the story of it being for Catholics is false. Anyhow, there's not a reference to a turkey anywhere in it.

Snopes says that the partridge was not introduced into England until the 1770s. Not so. The French (red-legged) partridge was introduced from France then but we had our own native English (grey-legged) partridge already. Neither takes to trees: they are ground dwellers. It might just be that the line should be ' a partridge and a perdrix' and is the result of a mis-hearing or misunderstanding. The French for the French partridge is perdrix and pronounced 'per-dree', so it sounds like 'pear tree'.Then the line would mean 'an English partridge and a French partridge '. The song first appears in print in 1780 just the time that French partridges were being introduced, when they would still be a rare novelty.One of each would be a really topical and fancy present .Only snag with this is that 'and' makes it two birds unless we think of one couple. Perhaps ' partridge as a perdrix? . It certainly makes more sense than giving a pear tree and getting some bird, terrestrial or arboreal, to stay roosting in it until the gift was made. That sounds impossible!

Right answers thank you all.