Up at an unholy hour to climb up Roseberry Topping and watch the sunrise. We were not alone. The place was packed, because apparently nothing says “Christmas spirit” like elbowing strangers on a hilltop. In Tudor times, you would not have found the masses up here. They would have been at Mass, fulfilling their religious duties before launching into their Twelve Days of feasting, each day dedicated to a different saint, with plenty of excuses for more solemnity and indulgence.
Back then, Christmas Day marked the end of Advent, a dreary stretch of 24 days without so much as a scrap of meat or dairy. The rich jazzed up their suffering with spices, dried fruit, and culinary trickery, while the poor gnawed on air-dried fish that had to be pulverised into submission before it could be eaten. A delightful season of deprivation. By the time Christmas Day rolled around, everyone was understandably desperate for a feast.
Specific Christmas foods were rare in Tudor times, but the usual suspects of any grand winter banquet made an appearance. Fowl was in season, so turkeys (courtesy of the Americas), geese, chickens, and even swans met their festive demise. The aristocracy also gorged on venison, peacocks, and an array of game birds. For those with truly deep pockets, the boar’s head took pride of place, though lesser pork dishes like brawn and suckling pig did the rounds among the slightly less extravagant. Pies, enormous and stuffed with every kind of meat imaginable, featured heavily.
Mince pies were less about sugared nostalgia and more about ground meat and spices wrapped in pastry. Cakes, too, made an appearance, such as the Twelfth Cake, a dense, yeasty concoction resembling a heavy fruit bread rather than the fluffy confections of modern times. In short, the Tudors managed to make even Christmas feel like a gruelling exercise in excess for some and grim survival for others. A charmingly balanced approach to the festive season.
Merry Christmas.
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