Explore Christmas traditions of bygone eras with Jo Evans. From the Romans to the Victorians, discover festive celebrations of the past.
Christmas is coming, the goose is getting fat. I’m not sure about the goose but the buttons on my trousers make a dramatic bid for freedom at this time of year. Most of us use the festive season as an excuse to have that little bit extra, be it a mince pie, Quality Street or a tipple or three, but do you ever wonder what kind of festive fayre our ancestors indulged in?
The Romans certainly loved a good knees-up and with deities for every occasion, they had more holidays than Judith Chalmers. Their version of Christmas was the Saturnalia, which Catullus called ‘the best of days’. It was a celebration whereby drinking alcohol was encouraged and slaves got to tell their masters exactly what they thought of them. Today we call it an Office Christmas Party.
Saturnalia was celebrated from 17th December and lasted for varying amounts of time depending on who was in charge. It started with a sacrifice to the god of agriculture, followed by a public feast when the sacrificial pigs were roasted and drinking, playing games and gambling were heartily encouraged. The following few days were spent at home with masters and slaves changing places. Gifts were exchanged and a cake was eaten containing a bean. Whoever found it would be crowned the King of the Saturnalia and lead the revelries, shouting out silly orders for people to obey.
The staple diet for Romans was bread, olive oil, honey, eggs, barley, fruit and vegetables. The wealthier added pheasant, venison, boar and peacock and delicacies such as dormice, thrush and songbirds. Most of it would have been smothered in garum which was fermented fish guts and used to flavour everything in Roman times. All accompanied by wine, but not the fine wine sold by Tanners! It was watered down with hot or cold water and often sweetened with honey or sapa, which was a sweetener containing sugary, but highly poisonous, lead acetate.
With the rise of Christianity came a little less revelry, with Advent becoming a time of prayer and fasting before celebrating over the Twelve Days of Christmas. Many Roman traditions were incorporated including gift giving and the King of Saturnalia, whose name now became the Lord of Misrule, a perfect name for a heavy metal band. Another incorporated tradition was the Nordic Yule Log, a giant branch that would be burned for 12 days, which has now become part of today’s Christmas, thankfully in smaller, edible form.
Medieval tables for the wealthy would be laid with delights such as stuffed wild boar’s heads and spit-roasted peacocks, their skin carefully removed with feathers intact and then sewn back onto the cooked bird. For a Christmas dinner held at Reading Abbey, Henry III ordered salmon, eels, venison and boar as well as 60 tuns of wine, one tun being equal to 1,272 bottles. And even the frugal monks really let down their tonsures over Christmas, with the financial accounts from Battle Abbey showing a substantial amount of money spent on imported French wines in December. And, whilst the monks and the rich enjoyed their clarets, the lower classes drank ale by the bucket load.
The Tudors, whose shenanigans in the Royal Court were as exciting as the Christmas Day episode of Eastenders, also stopped work for 12 days. Royal feasts included beef, venison and wild boar, plus peacock, swan, badger and souse (pickled pig’s trotters and ears). The showstoppers of the day, however, were pies. The bigger your Christmas Pie the better and, to get that Hollywood handshake, it had to contain as much meat or fish as possible and have a highly decorated pastry crust. Mince pies too were all the rage, containing fruit and spices along with minced beef, mutton and suet. The Tudors also loved a stuffed bird, preferably within another bird. To wash down all that fowl the gentry drank French wine and for the lower classes it was ale or mulled cider which was drunk when wassailing. The forerunner to carol singing, wassailing was when a group went from door to door singing and toasting each other from a wassail bowl containing a warm punch of ale or cider, sugar and spices.
The arrival of the Puritans dealt a blow to fun everywhere, especially Christmas which was outlawed in 1647. You were not allowed to celebrate, sing carols, give gifts or drink alcohol (and we thought Christmas in lockdown was bad).
Thankfully the Georgians knew how to party and Christmas became a month-long celebration starting on St Nicholas’ Day on 6th December. It was wassailing, feasts and balls galore. The Christmas table was loaded with beef, mutton and venison, turtle soup (yes, real turtles), brawn (broth made from a pig or cow’s head) and plum pudding. Sprouts were first seen in the UK in the 18th century so you can blame the Georgians for that.
Servants were given 26th December off work, many being given a Christmas Box containing leftover food, clothes and money. Hence the term Boxing Day, nothing to do with what you feel like doing to some family members after 24 hours in their company. The Christmas period ended in style with a Twelfth Night party, where a cake became the centrepiece, elaborately decorated with sugar paste figures and frosting. These parties were full of dancing and drinking; spirits being the drink du jour in the 1700s with the gin craze sweeping the lower classes in particular.
But it was the Victorians who set most of the traditions so familiar to us today. In England, gift giving was moved to 25th December and, with the rise of industry, the month-long celebrations were significantly cut to just two public holidays. In Scotland however, New Year remained the most important festive day with Boxing Day not even being made a public holiday until 1974. Victorian factories enabled mass production of toys which became affordable to most. Crackers were made and the penny post heralded the dawn of Christmas cards. Prince Albert is credited with bringing the idea of Christmas trees to the UK, decorating them with candles, fruit, nuts, sweets, ribbons, glass baubles and something unrecognisable made by their children.
In Victorian times goose was the staple meat eaten at Christmas for the lower classes, often being cooked in the local bakery on Christmas morning for those without ovens of their own. Workhouses and prisons were given one day off and served beef. However, the turkey was starting to make its mark with Mrs Beeton calling it the Christmas dinner of the middle classes. Bred in Norfolk and Suffolk, turkeys would be walked down to London to meet their fate in the markets. Drovers would sometimes have their flock’s feet dipped in tar and sand to create little boots for the march which could take as long as two months.
Dickens gives us a glimpse of a Victorian Christmas with Mrs Cratchit serving her goose with apple sauce and mashed potato and children smelling sage and onion stuffing. Scrooge partakes in a Smoking Bishop, a warm wine, port and citrus punch. Warm brandy, wassail punch and Negus were also drunk, with Champagne, Port and Claret being popular in the houses of the wealthy with the poor supping on gin and beer.
And since the Victorians? Well, not a lot has been added to Christmas apart from artificial trees, TV specials, the Monarch’s Speech, Elf on a Shelf and Michael Bublé. Not all good. So, when you are tucking into your mince pies and mulled wine and feeling nostalgic, just be thankful it’s the tastier traditions we’ve kept hold of. You might have been enjoying eels, dormice and lead- poisoned wine should things have gone in a different direction.