English Heritage

Roman Saturnalia Celebrations

The Roman midwinter festival of Saturnalia was held in honour of the Roman god Saturn. Starting on the 17th of December, it consisted of up to seven days of parties and public ceremonies. Throughout the year, the Romans normally followed extremely strict rules of behaviour and everyone knew their place. But during the Saturnalia, these rules were set aside.  Even slaves, who led hard lives with little time off, had permission to relax and have fun. Gambling was encouraged and freeborn Romans wore colourful clothes and a pileus, a conical hat normally only worn by freed slaves, rather than formal togas. 

The main Saturnalia tradition was the household feast, which could last for days. Masters invited their slaves to dine with them or even served their slaves themselves - unthinkable at other times of the year! The food probably varied depending on the household, but it would have been a rare opportunity for slaves to eat the fine foods normally reserved for their masters, and drink lots of wine. After the food there was more drinking, games, performances and, just like today, gifts were exchanged. Popular gifts included humble writing tablets as well as more expensive things, like exotic animals. 

Christmas in a Castle

In medieval England, the types of food served at Christmas were similar to those eaten on other feast days, like Easter and Whitsun. Fancy dishes were served in the wealthiest of castles, and there were larger portions of food and drink in the homes of peasants across the kingdom.

Everyone, rich or poor, used lots of bread. In wealthy households, diners placed small amounts of meat, fish or pottage – a kind of thick stew made from vegetables and grains – onto a thick slice of bread or a hollowed out loaf, called a trencher. Extravagant feasts included whole boar’s heads stuffed with bacon, salt and spices; spit roasted peacocks served whole, with the feathers re-attached; and huge quantities of pies. After the meal, soggy bread and pastry from the pies was sometimes given to poor people who waited at the manor or castle gates, or it was thrown away.

We don’t know whether spiced wine was usually drunk at Christmas, but we do know that poor people drank ale (a type of beer) and rich people had ale as well as expensive imported wines. Wine and ale were served in jugs on the table for guests to help themselves, and servants made sure the jugs were topped up. Ale was not very alcoholic and each person only drank a small amount of wine. 

Georgian Christmas Parties

At Christmas time, wealthy Georgians held lavish dinners and parties, eating huge quantities of food. Luxury loving Georgians ate a lot of meat at Christmas, particularly beef, mutton and venison, using it as a way to demonstrate their wealth and status. Poultry was usually served as a side dish, and the main choice of bird was goose, though turkey was now becoming more popular for families who could afford it. Other favourite Georgian Christmas foods included turtle soup, fish, cockles and mussels, brawn (a  meat jelly made from the boiled head of a calf seasoned with spices), mince pies, plum pudding and frumenty – a kind of porridge made with grains, almonds, currants and sugar, which was often served with meat.

Because so much food was eaten in large houses, a lot of it was prepared in advance. Boiled puddings would be made by kitchen staff a week before they were needed, and serving cold foods was usual. It was also usual to serve Christmas puddings and mince pies at the same time as the roast meats! The Georgian recipes for mince pies and Christmas pudding contained less meat than medieval and Tudor ones, and more dried fruit, spices and sugar, though even in the 1850s, food writer Eliza Acton’s recipe for mince pies still contained three tablespoons of diced beef as well as suet (an animal fat). Twelfth Night cakes were also very popular, and by the Regency period were highly decorated with coloured frostings, trimmings and sugar figurines.

Wassailing is another tradition that continued in the Georgian era. At parties, guests drank lightly spiced ale with honey from a large drinking bowl. This Wassail bowl was passed around the dinner table from person to person to drink to each other’s health. The flavour of the drink would have been similar to the mulled wine that many people enjoy at Christmas time today.

A modern 1930s Christmas

A 1930s Christmas dinner included a lot of the dishes we enjoy today. Some people still ate goose, but turkey was the most popular centrepiece in the 1920s and 1930s, and it was usually served with bread sauce. Most people did not own a fridge, so the turkey would have been collected as close to Christmas Day as possible, and would have cost an average person a week’s wages to buy (today, a turkey costs about two hours of an average wage). Wealthy families like the Courtaulds at Eltham Palace might have enjoyed turkey or goose as one of many dishes, and the meal would often include a cold buffet alongside hot food. 

Christmas dinner had also now taken the familiar form of a starter, main course and dessert. Recipes from newspapers and magazines from this period list popular Christmas starters as tomato soup, lobster au gratin, orange salad and celery surprise – celery sticks served with a paste made from celery, cod’s roe, butter, lemon juice and pepper.

When it came to dessert, Christmas pudding was very popular. The recipe for the Royal Christmas pudding was published in 1927, and it included ingredients sourced from across the British Empire, including ‘strong ale’. Brandy butter was first served with the pudding from the 1930s, and the custom of pouring alcohol into the Christmas pudding mix when making it started in this period too. In wealthy homes, the plum pudding might be served as one of the choices along with other lighter desserts. 

To wash down all of that lovely food, the Courtaulds, like many other rich people in the 1930s, loved cocktails. The Strand newspaper from 1930 published Christmas cocktail recipes that included the sidecar (made from lemon juice, Cointreau and brandy), Champagne punch and eggnog.