It's interesting and not a little horrifying what's happened to our holidays in the last 200 years or so (the most recent 50 being the most grievous offenders!), and not only in regard to food. This whole holiday thing has gotten completely out of hand! In the Middle Ages (I am admittedly a mediaevalist---get your pillows ready), a holiday usually had some religious connotation--a saint's day, an ancient pre-christian earth-based occasion tarted up for the Church, etc., but the upshot of the deal was that you didn't have to work---hurrah! So you could play games, play music, dance, eat & drink a bit more and (if you were lucky)a bit better than usual, but there wasn't this hideous commercial build-up we're subjected to nowadays.

It's interesting to consider that as recently as the 1840s, Christmas still wasn't really such a major event in the calendar (another nice pre-christian term!), but the marriage of V & A, the resulting importation of various Teutonic traditions and the publication of Dickens' "A Christmas Carol" were amongst the factors contributing to it becoming Such A Big Deal. But even the Cratchits just wanted a nice meal and a bit of hot gin (blecchh!) punch and some familial togetherness to feel they'd had a merry Christmas and that God had blessed them, every one. Then came the Christmas cards.....

My own mother, growing up in 1940s Warwickshire (admittedly in wartime, but still...) remembers fresh oranges as being amongst the greatest treats of Christmastime! It is indeed high time we make the effort to re-institute culinary traditions into our holidays, before we're all eating whatever Walt Disney & Co. deem appropriate for our "holiday feast" as dictated by Mickey Mouse and the advertising mascots of Toys R Us.....!