Skip to main content

Christmas Firsts #8 : Turkey


If your family is like ours, we love to have turkey at Christmas.  I have often wondered whether the tradition of Christmas turkey has its origins in England or in the USA. Turkey was already popular in the American colonies but Henry VIII  (1491 - 1547) was the first English king to enjoy turkey and was the first recorded king to have turkey on the Christmas menu in 1526.  However, eating turkey at Christmas didn't really become  fashionable  until the reign of   Edward VII ( 1841-1910). 
Mrs Beeton, in her 1861 Book of Household Management indicated that turkey was not popular as “a Christmas dinner with the middle classes” until the 19th century. At first, in medieval England, a main course of boar was the most popular. Through the 16th and 17th centuries goose or capon was commonly served, and the rich sometimes dined upon peacock and swan.
Turkeys, while becoming more available, remained a luxury until 1950’s. Working class families were not able to afford turkey even for Christmas.  ( Do you remember a famous Christmas dinner scene  at the end in Dickens' A Christmas Carol (1843), where Scrooge sends Bob Cratchitt a large turkey as an especially generous gift.)
I can’t remember when we first started to include turkey for our Christmas dinner in Australia. I don't recall turkey for Christmas when I was a child,  but for all of my married life,(46 years) we have owned and served on two large turkey platters. I am only assuming that turkey at Christmas must have been popular in Australia from about or before the 1960’s as  one of our platters,  a Johnson Brothers  is from that decade. 
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Thanks for reading my blog and please share your thoughts about my blog post by leaving a comment.Your comment won't appear immediately as comments are verified before publication in an effort to reduce the amount of spam appearing. Anonymous comments will not be published.

Popular posts from this blog

Countdown to Christmas 20 - Fruitcake song!

There are many songs about fruit cakes  - not all of them referring to the Christmas cake we know and love.It is really surprising to learn via Google that there are 89 listed songs with references to Christmas cake or fruit cake - not all of them complimentary.   Probably one of the most famous folk songs about Christmas cake is Miss Fogarty's  Christmas Cake (a favourite sung by The Irish Rovers).  This first recorded comical Christmas song was written by C Frank Horn in 1883 in Pennsylania, as a variation of an Irish folk song, 'Miss Mulligan's Christmas Cake' . The chorus might give you the hint that Miss Fogarty's cake was not for the faint hearted or those who suffered from a weak stomach.    Chorus : There were plums and prunes and cherries, There were citrons and raisins and cinnamon, too There was nutmeg, cloves and berries And a crust that was nailed on with glue There were caraway seeds in abundance Such that...
Post a Comment
Read more

Christmas Firsts #18 : Where in the World?

Where in the world will FIRST  experience Christmas Day? Because of the time zones and daylight saving , the first places will be   Samoa,    Tonga  and Kiritimati (Christmas Island) . They   are the first places to welcome Christmas. New Zealand and Australia see in Christmas Day soon after,  while American Samoa and Baker Island in the United States of America are among the last. These statistics are more often quoted in relation to New Year's Eve, but I think it seems appropriate that Christmas Island is one of the first to celebrate Christmas in the world.  Kiritimati,    or Christmas Island, is a Pacific Ocean raised coral atoll in the northern Line Islands. It is part of the Republic of Kiribati. The name "Kiritimati" is a respelling of the English word "Christmas" in the  Kiribati language   The island has the greatest land area of any  coral atoll  in the w...
Post a Comment
Read more

Christmas Firsts #11: Penguins

This year, I fell into the sentimental trap of making some penguin softies for Christmas .... and I am not the only one - penguins seem to be everywhere at the moment dressed in Christmassy costumes, with trees, bells, and all kinds of Christmas paraphernalia.   Should penguins really  be associated with Christmas?   Probably not  and not as Santa's helpers as they often depicted. Penguins inhabit the Antarctic region in the South Pole, while Santa Claus it has been established has his home in the North Pole. The theory is that somehow penguins are associated with snow, then Winter, then Christmas, but what about us in the southern hemisphere. Perhaps they are just cute?  Whatever the reason, when were penguins first seen as part of the Christmas scene ?  While there is no verifiable answer, it would seem that Monty the Penguin in the John Lewis Christmas advertisement in 2014  popularised  the trend. (If you are not famil...
Post a Comment
Read more