[Sca-cooks] Christmas Food

[Christine Seelye-King]

This article has loads of info pertaining to Santa and Christmas, this
section is about the food, and I thought there might be some interest in
what it says.  I don't agree 100% with some of the assertations, but most of
the citations in the rest of the paper are very good.
Enjoy!
Christianna

From: THE ORIGIN OF AMERICAN CHRISTMAS MYTH AND CUSTOMS
B. K. Swartz, Jr.  http://www.bsu.edu/web/01bkswartz/xmaspub.html

FOOD
The Christmas food we eat today is a blend of two feast patterns. The first
is the Winter Festival Feast, a la Dickens This pattern was Germano-Celtic
in origin in Europe and centered on the solstice celebration. In America
this pattern became established in the Mid-Atlantic states in Virginia
(Episcopal control) and New York Dutch (not Pennsylvania Dutch which have
sausage, smoked meat, ham, etc.). The second food pattern is the Harvest
Bounty Feast. It has a reformist background and its origins are from the
post-Henry VIII Harvest Home Ceremony. Pilgrims in New England established
this tradition and by the 19th century the celebration was transferred from
autumnal thanksgiving harvest time to winter Christmas time. The bulk of the
colonial Atlantic south (Maryland to Georgia) had little celebration,
Christmas being disdained by Scotch- Irish Presbyterians.

 Winter festival food (original Christmas food at Jamestown, 1608) is
oysters, fish, "meat," wild fowl and bread. Eggnog, originally egg grog
(post-1750) is a later colonial Virginia concoction. It was made by adding
rum to the French drink lait de poule. Traditional winter festival food is
boar, roast, mince (meat) pie, plum pudding (raisin "hearts," no plums),
sugarplums (originally greengage plums boiled in syrup and cornstarch,
crystallized by cooling, but now considered to be chocolate coated cordials;
term survives from Moore's A Visit from St. Nicholas poem "with visions of
sugarplums dancing" and The Nutcracker Suite "Sugarplum fairy"). Goose also
in complex (see above). Wassailing (salutation drinking from a bowl),
Anglo-Saxon (at least the term) - Wass Hael, "Be in health." Bowl to be kept
full from Christmas Eve until the Twelfth Night.

 Harvest bounty food (supposed original food at Plymouth Rock, 1621) is
turkey, pumpkin, corn, lima beans and cranberries. The only food items that
have any documentation at the original meal, however, are venison and wild
fowl (turkey?). Turkey was domesticated in Mesoamerica and was in England by
1524 and then to New England by early colonists and crossbred. Some original
Pilgrims may have eventually known of domesticated turkey. To show the split
in food pattern, Puritans banned mince pie in colonial and commonwealth
Massachusetts. They believed the devil was baked in. It is now tolerated for
Thanksgiving.

 By the 19th century these two basic food traditions were blending in Europe
and America. Though Dickens, Christmas Carol (1843), conveys a Winter
Festival food tradition, Tiny Tim's family served fowl, and turkey is
mentioned at end of the story. An ideal New Yorker (city) Christmas meal in
1875 was turkey stuffed with oysters.

 Hubbard (winter) squash (Andes) is later food item and now thrives in the
cool climate of New England. The "Irish" potato was domesticated in the
Andes highlands and was introduced to America from Ireland after the Irish
famine of 1845-46. The sweet potato was domesticated in northern tropical
South America. It probably was introduced to the southern U.S. by Caribbean
slaves in the early 18th century. To this day it is not popular in New
England. The yam we are familiar with is not a true yam, but a variety of
sweet potato.