Since mid November it seems that all our family Christmas stuff including gifts have been ordered or already arrived. The overworked cliches give way to new ones.... chocolate sprouts come to mind and so it goes on. I wonder if it will fade as have other celebrations that once gripped the masses - or do such events  adjust to suit their time? Few cakes are sold decorated this year because the usual plastic jee jaws  used for it are not being imported from China. Many great Christmas Fairs in Europe may be closed this year -  and tho I suspect this will not be popular perhaps it will bring change...... the Christian connection gets thinner, that is for sure...........not in football of course. I am thinking of the heading about Jesus being the Saviour re his winning goal for Man City last night; Temps may well shudder.

The "Christian connection" is, of course, a much later attempt to take over the Pagan midwinter festivals such as Yule and Saturnalia. There is little or no reason to connect the "birth of Jesus" with a midwinter date.

Yes, of course, GG - but isn't paganism also religious; like your green man and similar spirts of nature - whatever - being celebrated/patronised in cult practice? I once annoyed nord - happened all the time, of course - by suggesting that he was atheist because he was so down wind of anything that had a spiritual tie. Perhaps only the truly atheist would ignore all the trappings that go with what we call the festive season. Which begs the question about why we do any of it? (Said she about to send out cards and beginning the nagging drive to find the remains of last year's door wreathe to make afresh.)

Christmas? ... but it's not even December yet.

Here in southern France we've only just done Armistice Day/Sant-Marti/Harvest Festival (all on the 11th November), plus in the afternoon the village Castagnarde, the Harvest Ball and the competition for the heaviest pumpkin (I was third). However, having just phoned my sister in England, she says that according to her Cadbury's Chocolate Advent Calendar, Christmas Eve is tomorrow ... meanwhile according to my 'glass of wine a day' regime, I'm already at 23rd June 2178.

Clearly time is an allusion ... lunchtime doubly so.

We clearly need a n indulging space filler here in UK - Harvest Festivals no longer drum up a thrash. The Scots, of course have St Andrew's night. and yobs have taken over 5th November to lob fireworks about. Rockets flairs at an old time in these parts however apparently means that drugs have arrived.
from afar, I envy the Thanksgiving family gathering routines of the USA. No one gives thanks for anything beyond, ta muchly,.....kerching - here, in UK I suspect because rights and entitlements are expected. So your rural festivals are enviable, MM. Most of Tesco's winter fare is sold out already here and that part of their site has been removed. Your sister's advent calendar reckoning reminds me of my mother bobbing about to see if she could see the sun over the yard arm ,,, we lived by a river, ,,, before sloshing slugs of port all round enough to tackle getting some sort of lunch going.

Last Sunday was "stir up Sunday"  traditionally the day for making the Christmas cake and pudding. I remember it as the day after my grandparents cycled the mile or so to their friends at Wall (with me on my grandfather's crossbar) for the ritual preparation of the christmas cakes and puddings. We men would go up the hill to The Trooper, where a libation of Ind Coope ale (vimto in my case) accompanied the purchase of a bottle of milk stout and a quarter bottle of rum as the essential alcoholic ingredients. Much chopping, mixing, and measuring produce a range full of christmas fare, which "Aunty" would preside over into the small hours, with the cooked product being delivered to grandma's house next day on "Aunty Ken's" BSA Bantam with the Sunday papers.

Or one could just skip the whole thing and fast-forward to Boxing Day, which is what The Guardian seems to be suggesting with their recipe posted on 27 November for High and mighty - how to turn Christmas Day leftovers into a stunning pie. This "stunning pie" seems to consist of nothing more than throwing all the scraps and left-overs into a pie dish and covering with a very meagre pastry crust (65g of flour, really is that all?). Whatever next, how to turn the leftovers from your Leftover Pie into a "stunning" soup? All in all it reads a bit like something from a 1940s Ministry of Food wartime pamphlet. Or is that really what lockdown/brexit/HGV-driver-short/panic-sold-out Britain is now reduced to?  

The chaos seen from above is not quite so obvious on the ground - not in my area , anyway. Decorations seem to be going up very early. Many front doors appear to be gift wrapped with big bows - an odd sight. Where did that come from? festive food appears to be lmore straight forward...... I have not seen those offers of assorted bits of birds in a kind of muck muck joint on offer as yet...... reminded me of tales of stuffed camel that I never quite believed; you know the one with chickens inside sheep inside camel and filled in with savoury rice.(Not sure how it was cooked......on a big spit, I assume - much like an ancient hog roast.) Cooking can be a problem here too. I know of people who bought turkeys bigger than their oven capacity. Which leads me to wonder about the time line of the instillation of ovens into small homes .

I read somewhere that Henry VIII had turkey as a Christmas choice, but only as a novel and trendy alternative to the usual roasted peacock or swan. Turkeys had been discovered in the New World by the Spanish adventurer, Pedro Nino, and he brought back a few for breeding in Europe. Henry apparently said that it would take more than Pedro Nino to make the English take to such poultry which he judged to be "as tasteless as wood". My father would never allow turkey - he agreed with Henry - and we always had pork or beef on Christmas Day. Wonder what he and Henry would make of woke vegan nut roast on Christmas Day?

I believe the French are mystified by the inexplicable English habit of putting "jam" on their turkey, i.e. cranberry sauce (which I love). Can you put cranberry sauce on nut roast? I don't see why not.

With a striking black plumage, we believe our fresh Norfolk Black Turkeys are tastier than any other you will ever have the pleasure to roast. Originating in North America, Norfolk Black Turkeys were introduced into Europe in the 16th Century by Spanish explorer Pedro Nino. Considered the oldest turkey breed in Britain, Norfolk Black Turkeys became recognised as a premier breed in East Anglia. During the 17th Century, they were driven in flocks from Norfolk to be sold in London with their feet tarred and wrapped in hessian to protect them during their epic journey. Today, Norfolk Black Turkeys have gained in popularity and are promoted by famous chefs including Delia Smith, Rick Stein and Jamie Oliver.

Poor turkeys, having their feet "tarred" and then being driven all the way to London. One remembers this poignant poem by Benjamin Zephaniah:




Talking Turkeys

Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas
Cos’ turkeys just wanna hav fun
Turkeys are cool, turkeys are wicked
An every turkey has a Mum.
Be nice to yu turkeys dis christmas,
Don’t eat it, keep it alive,
It could be yu mate, an not on your plate
Say, Yo! Turkey I’m on your side.
I got lots of friends who are turkeys
An all of dem fear christmas time,
Dey wanna enjoy it, dey say humans destroyed it
An humans are out of dere mind,
Yeah, I got lots of friends who are turkeys
Dey all hav a right to a life,
Not to be caged up an genetically made up
By any farmer an his wife.

Turkeys just wanna play reggae
Turkeys just wanna hip-hop
Can yu imagine a nice young turkey saying,
‘I cannot wait for de chop’,
Turkeys like getting presents, dey wanna watch christmas TV,
Turkeys hav brains an turkeys feel pain
In many ways like yu an me.

I once knew a turkey called…Turkey
He said “Benji explain to me please,
Who put de turkey in christmas
An what happens to christmas trees?”,
I said “I am not too sure turkey
But itÕs nothing to do wid Christ Mass
Humans get greedy an waste more dan need be
An business men mek loadsa cash’.

Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
Invite dem indoors fe sum greens
Let dem eat cake an let dem partake
In a plate of organic grown beans,
Be nice to yu turkey dis christmas
An spare dem de cut of de knife,
Join Turkeys United an dey’ll be delighted
An yu will mek new friends ‘FOR LIFE’.


PS BZ is a very serious person - who understands disaffected kids as well as turkeys:

Turkeys reached England surprisingly quickly (about 1526) after their very first arrival in Spain (in 1523-4) immediately following Cortez' conquest of Mexico/New Spain. They seem to have arrived in England through the agency of the 'London Levant and Turkey Merchants' Company', who often touched in at Seville on their way to and from their main market which was Constantinople and other ports along the Levantine coast in the eastern Mediterranean. Not familiar with its Mexican name, uexolotl, or understandably reluctant to pronounce it, the English solved the problem in their usual way and called it the 'turkie cock'. Unfortunately at just about the same time the Portuguese brought the guinea-fowl back to Europe from one of its homelands in West Africa and the 'Levant and Turkey Merchants' picked that bird up too and transported it onward to England. These African guinea-fowl were not unlike a miniaturized version of the American turkey, both in looks and in their reluctance to fly, and so inevitably these birds also came to be known as turkie-cocks or simply turkeys.

But although some sources claim that in 16th century England any reference to turkey really meant guinea-fowl, this cannot be the case. When Archbishop Cranmer framed his sumptuary laws of 1541 he classed turkey-cocks with birds of the size of crane, bustard and swan, not, as he would have done with guinea-fowl, alongside chickens, ducks and pheasants. At much the same time a certain Sir William Petre was keeping his table birds alive until wanted in a large cage in his Essex Orchard, including: "partridges, pheasants, guinea-hens, turkey hens and such like." And the heraldic arms granted in 1550 to William Strickland of Boynton-on-the-Wold in which the crest is described as "a turkey-cock in his pride proper", show a bird that is without doubt, a proper turkey. I wonder if it was Strickland who had supplied Henry VIII's "wooden" Christmas turkeys and gained his title thereby. Strickland’s descendants claimed he had sailed to the Americas with Sebastian Cabot who was then in the service of Spain and whose son, John Cabot, had been commissioned to explore the North American coast by Henry's father, Henry VII. Accordingly, so his descendants claimed, it was Strickland who had introduced the turkey direct to England in about 1526, however there is no documented evidence to support this and it does seem rather unlikely. But either way by 1550 Strickland had made his fortune as a Tudor turkey entrepreneur; the Bernard Matthews of his day.

Turkeys, clearly identifiable as such, were also depicted by mid 16th century Flemish artists, such as this by Pieter Brueghel the Elder, The Seven Deadly Sins – Envy (c.1557):

   

... and this by Joachim Beuckelaer, The Well-Stocked Kitchen (1566):

      
 
Turkeys were fabulously expensive when first introduced into England. However by the 1550s they’d gone down in price to about 6 shillings each and by the 1570s - by which time they were widely raised and were readily available at markets throughout the land, if perhaps still only for the better off - the price had dropped to 3s 4d for a cock and 1s 8d for a hen (when a capon might cost 9d). The large difference in the price between turkey cocks and hens reflects the fact that they show extreme sexual dimorphism. Male turkeys are typically more than twice the weight of the females and this price difference again reinforces the fact that these were proper turkeys and not guinea-fowl which show no such dimorphism.

Here’s the first English recipe I can find for baked/roasted turkey - it's taken from The Good Huswife’s Jewell (1596) by Thomas Dawson.

To Bake a Turkie
Take a fat Turkie, and after you haue scalded him and washed him cleane, lay him vpon a faire cloth and slit him through-out the backe, and when you haue taken out his garbage, then you must take out his bones so bare as you can, when you haue so doone wash him cleane, then trusse him and pricke his backe toghether, and so haue a faire kettle of seething water and perboyle him a little, then take him vp that the water may runne cleane out from him, and when he is colde, season him with pepper and Salt, and then pricke hym with a fewe cloues in the breast, and also drawe him with larde if you like of it, and when you haue maide your coffin and laide your Turkie in it, then you must put some Butter in it, and so close him vp. in this sorte you may bake a goose, a Pheasant, or capon.

Oh, excellent research, MM - thank you. Who would have thought so much info would come from a passing mention of this Christmas fare?

I wonder what the origin of the expression "to talk turkey" is? More of an American idiom perhaps? Then there is the verdict of "a real turkey" being applied to some films and theatre productions - that is a critical judgement readily understood in the UK - seems very unfair on turkeys. Can you say - of a badly-cooked bird on Christmas Day - this turkey is a real turkey?

Temperance wrote:

I wonder what the origin of the expression "to talk turkey" is? More of an American idiom perhaps?

I had to look that up. Initially I supposed that it might have related to the "gobble-gobble" sound a turkey makes or to the original Mexica name in the Nahuatl language, uexolotl, which I guess may itself have been onomatopoeic in origin, and so I thought the expression may have originally implied some sort of intense argument. However it seems not. The idiom was in use by the first half of the 1800s and is said to come from an apocryphal tale about a white man and an Indian hunting together in colonial times. Here's an account of the tale from an article in the Baltimore Niles’ Weekly Register (3 June 1837):

An Indian and a white man went a-shooting in partnership and a wild turkey and a crow were all the results of the day's toil. The white man, in the usual style of making a bargain with the Indian, proposed a division of the spoils in this way: "Now Wampum, you may have your choice: you take the crow, and I'll take the turkey; or, if you'd rather, I'll take the turkey and you take the crow." Wampum reflected a moment on the generous alternative thus offered, and replied - "Ugh! You no talk turkey to me a bit.

Needless to say there is no evidence that any such exchange actually happened but the same basic story appears in multiple first hand sources throughout the 19th century.

Have just - on line - come across a large stand up Christmas cake decoration that reads 'Happy Birthday Jesus' and just when we thought it was all over.

Does it come with 2021 candles on it?  

Priscilla wrote:

 Many front doors appear to be gift wrapped with big bows - an odd sight.

I have just spotted my first front door gift-wrapped with a huge bow - in our village!!!

The house is a new-build with an elaborate balcony, and last Christmas they had a reindeer and three baby reindeer all staring out from it across the river. I don't know how the animals all got up there - the mother reindeer was enormous. Plus, oddly, a  tinsel-festooned Buddhas's head  (an ironic religious statement, perhaps?) in the front garden; also a monster wreath on the front door and a pair of festive ice-skates dangling from the wreath. I have never seen ice skates used before in a nativity scene. They have a flag-pole, too, with a Merry Christmas flag which was hoisted in late autumn. The new residents obviously love Christmas. 

I suspect the English class system has much to say on the appropriate choice of exterior festive festoons. I have one tiny pottery robin which I put on an upturned flowerpot in my porch. Quite sufficient, I think.

My original word for the Winter Celebrations - Schadenfreudefest - is now replaced with ChinesischerKrempelfest. What a snobby old misery I have become.

A flagpole in the front garden, they wouldn't be American by any chance?

And ChinesischerKrempelfest - ah yes I can relate to that although perhaps not so much here as the seasonal tat  err decorations, are only just starting to appear. Nevertheless I still prefer your original Schadenfreudefest, with its many implied layers of bitter class-conscious angst and smug faux-charitable one-upmanship. All things might indeed be "bright and beautiful", at least for some, but,

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
God made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

What a bitter old  cynic I have become.

Freeview 51, Great Christmas Movies, have been showing Christmas films since SEPTEMBER!!

There are some houses locally with Xmas decorations including lights though the majority haven't put them up yet.  Regarding Temperance's mention of a flag pole, I noticed a house on the road where I live with a Christmas flag.  I've usually seen flags there (they don't fly flags every day) such as the St George's flag or the Union Jack, often if England or the UK is taking part in a sporting event.

A Republican congressman has just released  his family Christmas Photo with each of the family toting an array of lethal looking firing arms - would not dignify it by putting a showing of it here.
However, against the clamour of outrage, another of his lobby pals has announced that it was  exactly his sort of Christmas card.  Yuk!

BBC1 Christmas Day schedule from 50 years ago.

BBC1 25 December 1971

Fair to say that some of these programmes and presenters would not receive airtime today.

You really should have put a trigger warning before that ... Jimmy Saville introducing Top of the Pops, Rolf Harris visiting vulnerable children, the Black and White Minstrels, and Billy Smart's Circus with performing animals! I'm mentally scarred now.

At least one item is overdue a retun.

Closedown.

(Cue Grandma "It's as far away as ever")

Meles meles wrote:

You really should have put a trigger warning before that ... Jimmy Saville introducing Top of the Pops, Rolf Harris visiting vulnerable children, the Black and White Minstrels, and Billy Smart's Circus with performing animals! I'm mentally scarred now.

It was to show just how different things were then.

.............................................................................................................................

It's believed that Christmas Trees were introduced to the UK by Prince Albert:

A short history of Christmas Cards:

Triceratops wrote:

Meles meles wrote:

You really should have put a trigger warning before that ...

It was to show just how different things were then.

Oh dear Trike ... yes I fully understood that, hence my deliberate use of the words of modern 'wokeism' (a term I heartily hate and generally refuse to use because it's just a sloppy label for all the things certain sections of society don't like). But d'oh!, I was just trying to be ironically - or should that be sardonically, or even cynically - humorous. An attempt that seems to have fallen completely flat.

And so now on to the word 'flummery' in the OP.

Is this supposed to be in the original sense of a 'gelatinous pudding made by straining boiled oatmeal or flour' , or in its later meaning of 'an ornate, flamboyant but ultimately meaningless something; a silly trifle with no real substance'. [OED] ?

Trike's TV guide was fascinating and shows just how much has changed in our lifetime.  Absolutely necessary, long-overdue change. But sanctimonious, self-righteous, shouty wokery is something else, and is awful - you can't say anything in the UK these days for fear of upsetting someone who glares at you with a sour, prim face. NO sense of humour or tolerance, definitely no cakes and ale allowed here any more. I am sure no one at Res His was offended. We always had the hufficopter in the old days for dealing with people being outraged - it was always a salutary experience being bundled into the Res His hufficopter - being taken away and being made to consider one's silliness in being too easily offended. We need wokicopters these days.

Woke Ones, aka  the New Puritans, make me want to pretend I'm going to buy a gas-guzzling 4x4, turn the central heating up several degrees and watch old Carry On Offending films. Not really, but you get my drift. I am at the moment in terrible trouble for telling the story about Denis/Denise, the only transgender cat in our village. The moggy isn't the least bit offended, I should add. He/she/it/they (choose appropriate pronoun) is a lovely moggy and is a good friend of mine.

But I ramble - back to the thread.

I like "flummerty". It is a lovely word.

PS Hope I haven't said anything I shouldn't have. See - I'm a nervous wreck...

The word 'flummery', for a gelatinous grain-based pudding, seems to be derived from the Welsh word for a similar sour oatmeal dish, llymru, which is of very ancient heritage. In English it is first recorded in Gervase Markham's 1623 book, 'Countrey Contentments, or the English Huswife':

"From this small Oat-meale, by oft steeping it in water and clensing it, and then boyling it to a th icke and stiffe jelly, is made that excellent dish of meat which is so esteemed in the West parts of this Kingdome, which they call Wash-brew, and in Chesheire and Lankasheire they call it Flamerie or Flumerie".

The word flummery subsequently came to have generally pejorative connotations of a bland, empty, unsatisfying food, and so 'flummery' developed the meaning of empty compliments, flattery or other nonsense, whether in writing or speech. A good descriptor indeed for many of the aspects of the annual winter Schadenfreudefeste.

MM wrote:

(Reason for editing : flummery nor flummerty)

Oh, I thought flummerty was an earlier version of flummery. I much prefer your "wrong" word, MM - "flummerty" has a nice 16th century ring about it. Or perhaps it could pass for some old dialect word: "Hark at 'ee rabbiting on - 'tis nowt but yer usual flummerty!"

I'm thinking of a word in Thomas Hardy's "The Mayor of Casterbridge" - frumenty - the porridge that has cheap brandy added to it. I thought it was a Dorset dialect word, but apparently not:

Frumenty (sometimes frumentee, furmity, fromity, or fermenty) was a popular dish in Western European medieval cuisine. It is a porridge, a thick boiled grain dish—hence its name, which derives from the Latin word frumentum, "grain". It was usually made with cracked wheat boiled with either milk or broth and was a peasant staple. More luxurious recipes include eggs, almonds, currants, sugar, saffron and orange flower water. Frumenty was served with meat as a pottage, traditionally with venison or even porpoise (considered a "fish" and therefore appropriate for Lent). It was also frequently used as a subtlety, a dish between courses at a banquet.

Gone off-topic again. Apologies.

Quite right Temp, I mixed my flummery with my frumenty and got in a mess of pottage.

Flummeries might have often been rather bland and without texture - although they could of course be flavoured and coloured with whatever you wanted - but there was a fashion for making them in very fancy moulds, much like jellies, to form towering table centrepieces. The more elaborate of these were known as Solomon's Temples, for example this recipe from 'The Housekeeper's Instructor' by W. A. Henderson (London, 1805).



Being tall, wobbly and bedight with fruit and flowers, I'd imagine they were notoriously tricky to serve, hence why they were usually placed as centerpieces on the dessert table.



You could of course make your flummery in whatever mould you chose - I particularly like this little flummery hedgehog (made with an early 19th century ceramic mould):

It's often thought that the modern day image of Santa Claus was created by the Coca Cola Company.

However, this picture by Thomas Nast appeared in the 1st January 1881 edition of Harper's Weekly several decades before Coca- Cola began using the image:



Meles and Temp, I went back a further ten years and guess what, there actually is a yellow warning for the 10.00 am programme. 

NB the circus and minstrels are still there, with the B & W's occupying the prestigious 8.00pm slot:

BBC TV Christmas Day 1961

I wonder - is "flummery" cognate with frummity/furmity/frumenty and thus derived from the Latin "frumentum" for grain?

Mulled wine was becoming a big thing before no gatherings for many was decreed. I'm not sure if that is a modernish thing - or if connected to wassailing beverages and other such that only seem to appear at this season... I recall advocaat/egg nog being very popular at one time. Oddly flavoured gin seems to be making the rounds or was that last year's fad? never was one for keeping up.......

Smoking Bishop, a variety of mulled wine, is mentioned by Dickens in the last chapter of 'A Christmas Carol':

"A Merry Christmas, Bob!" said Scrooge with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. "A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you for many a year! I’ll raise your salary, and endeavor to assist your struggling family, and we will discuss your affairs this very afternoon over a bowl of Smoking Bishop, Bob! Make up the fires, and buy another coal-scuttle before you dot another i Bob Cratchit!"

Scrooge was better than his word. He did it all, and infinitely more ...


'The Christmas Bowl' by John Leech was the final illustration in the 1843 first edition of 'A Christmas Carol'.

As ever Dickens was an acute observer of contemporary Victorian fashions, foibles and failings. Eliza Acton in her popular cookbook 'Modern Cookery for Private Families' has a recipe for "Oxford Bishop" in the chapter devoted to various drinks, including punches, toddies, possets, nightcaps and mulled wines. 'Modern Cookery' was first published in 1845 (just two years after 'A Christmas Carol') but it continued to be updated and re-issued until well into the 20th century. This is from the 1864 reprint of the first edition, page 580:

Oxford Receipt for Bishop.
Make several incisions in the rind of a lemon, stick cloves in these, and roast the lemon by a slow fire. Put small but equal quantities of cinnamon, cloves, mace, and allspice, with a race of ginger, into a saucepan with half a pint of water: let it boil until it is reduced one-half. Boil one bottle of port wine, burn a portion of the spirit out of it by applying a lighted paper to the saucepan; put the roasted lemon and spice into the wine ; stir it up well, and let it stand near the fire ten minutes. Rub a few knobs of sugar on the rind of a lemon, put the sugar into a bowl or jug, with the juice of half a lemon (not roasted), pour the wine into it, grate in some nutmeg, sweeten it to the taste, and serve it up with the lemon and spice floating in it.
Bishop is frequently made with a Seville orange stuck with cloves and slowly roasted, and its flavour to many tastes is infinitely finer than that of the lemon.

In Victorian Britain there were several similar, hot and spiced (ie mulled) alcoholic drinks, known collectively as the 'ecclesiastics': Smoking Archbishop was made with claret; Smoking Beadle was made with ginger-wine and raisins; Smoking Cardinal was made with Champagne or white Rhenish wine; and Smoking Pope was made, not with Temp's favourite Châteauneuf-du-Pape, but rather with a full-bodied red Burgundy.

Of course spiced alcoholic drinks, such as the medieval spiced wine hippocras (vinum hippocraticum), go back very much further.

I can remember mulled wine of some type being available at a fund-raiser at the urban farm in Hackney some time in the early 2000s (pre-autumn 2010 anyway because that's when I left London).

The Oxford 'Receipt' - first time I have seen it written thus - sounds really good. But how to put out the flame when burning some of the spirit out of the port; and why would that be a good thing, anyway, I wonder?
Fires at Christmas ought be added to my 'F' Christmas title list; candles on trees and paper chains on the mantelpiece, all aflame, I do recall. Then there was the pretty table turning decoration of cherubs and jewels that caught fire as lunch was being brought in. I followed the gaze of the seated awestruck 4yr old who was saying OMG over and over. By then the centrepiece was in full flame so quick thinking me poured the gravy all over it. The resultant mess meant our lunch was nowhere as visually attractive as ads will have it so no pics, either- and yes, the turkey was a bit dry that year.

Receipt, sometimes written receit, and meaning a list of ingredients and instructions for a cook, is correct English and is actually the term generally used before the 18th century. But 'recipe' basically meaning the same thing but with French spelling, only starts to come into use in Britain during the 18th century. However both words/spellings ultimately derive from the same Latin root 'recipit' meaning something received, whether that be a bill for goods or services (a receipt), a physician's list of medicinal things to be taken (a prescription), an instruction listing ingredients for a cook (a recipe), a trade guild's requirements for the training for an aspiring apprentice (their 'receipt of knowledge'), and so forth.

Also for your festive fires and flames there's the traditional flaming Christmas pud'.



When did that tradition start? Mrs Beeton in her 1861 'Book of Household Management' certainly gives instructions for pouring brandy over a hot Christmas plum pudding and then lighting it, but I'm struggling to find many earlier references for the practice (and prior to the 18th century distilled spirits of sufficient flammability would generally have been very expensive). Is it a hangover from medieval subtleties and other celebratory dishes which might be brought to table accompanied by music and fireworks ... such as a roast peacock with its plumage put back on and a burning sulfur taper in its mouth to make it look like it was breathing fire; a roasted mythical cockatrice (a pig and chicken sewn together); or a sugar sculpture of a ship with its model guns firing?

Or, as with so many English-derived Christmas traditions, was it just made up by the Victorians?

In partial answer to my own question, I think the tradition of the flaming pudding must predate the Victorians because of the Christmas game of snapdragon (or flapdragon) which is recorded from about the 16th century. Typically raisins were placed in a wide shallow bowl and then brandy was heated, poured into the bowl and set alight, with the aim being to extract and eat the raisins. The game is described in Samuel Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language (1755) as "a play in which they catch raisins out of burning brandy and, extinguishing them by closing the mouth, eat them."

Shakespeare mentions flap-dragons (and clearly the audience was expected to understand the references), both in Love's Labour's Lost (1594),

O, they have lived long on the alms-basket of words.
I marvel thy master hath not eaten thee for a word
for thou art not so long by the head as honorificabilitudinitatibus:
thou art easier swallowed than a flap-dragon.

and in Henry IV, Part 2 (1598),

Because their legs are both of a bigness, and a'
plays at quoits well, and eats conger and fennel,
and drinks off candles' ends for flap-dragons.

By the mid-19th century snap-dragon was firmly entrenched as a Christmas parlour game. In this sense it is referenced in 1836 in Charles Dickens' 'The Pickwick Papers' and in 1861 in Anthony Trollope's novel 'Orley Farm'. And Lewis Carroll, in 'Through the Looking-Glass, and What Alice Found There' (1871) describes "A snap-dragon-fly. Its body is made of plum pudding, its wings of holly-leaves, and its head is a raisin burning in brandy." There were sometimes traditions associated with the game, such as whoever snatched the most raisins would find true love in the following year, or that one raisin had a small silver button hidden inside and the person who retrieved the 'lucky raisin', could claim a reward or favor - again with echoes of silver sixpences hidden in the Christmas pud' or the 'king bean' hidden in the Epiphany galette des rois.

So the idea of ceremonially bringing in the flaming fruit pudding would indeed seem to be part of wider and older Christmas traditions.

Triceratops wrote:

BBC1 Christmas Day schedule from 50 years ago.

Just got the Radio Times Christmas edition and BBC2 are showing the Morecambe and Wise Christmas Special from 1971 on Christmas Day at 7.00pm. This is the one with Glenda Jackson, Shirley Bassey and Andre Preview Previn.

I'm rather surprised that for one of the prime evening slots on Christmas Day the BBC are resorting to a repeat from 40 years ago.


Completely by coincidence with the posts above about mulled wine, our friend Max Miller featured Smoking Bishop on 'Drinking History' two days ago. He uses the recipe in 'Apician Anecdotes, or, Tales of the Table, Kitchen and Larder', written by the delightfully-named, Dick Humelbergius Secundus in 1836, which interestingly Eliza Acton, who I quoted above, followed almost word-for-word with just a final addition of some nutmeg to make it her own.



Max also mentions why it was called bishop, quoting Dr Johnson's dictionary of 1755: "Bishop - A cant word for a mixture of wine, oranges, and sugar" and Jonathan Swift's satirical essay 'A Modest Proposal' (1729) in which he wrote "Fine orange well roasted with sugar and wine in a cup, they'll make a sweet bishop when gentle folks sup." Furthermore the names of the 'ecclesiastics' apparently derive from the colours of their vestments, hence smoking bishop, made with port, is dark purple, the usual colour of a bishop's cassock.

There again in the Netherlands and Belgium Christmas mulled wine is often known as bisschopswijn (bishop's wine) particularly when it is associated with the Sinterklaas holidays (5 and 6 December), the specific bishop in this case being Sint-Nicolaas (Saint Nicholas) who was a 4th century Greek bishop of Myra in Asia Minor.

Meles meles wrote:

I'm struggling to find many earlier references for the practice (and prior to the 18th century distilled spirits of sufficient flammability would generally have been very expensive).

Intriguing point. Away from plum duffs and figgy puddings, let’s try looking at the practice generally and beyond England too.

Considering that brandy is a French product and that the word flambé is French, then surely this technique must have originated in France. There is, of course, the possibility that it was invented in England and subsequently reverse-adopted back across the British Channel. For instance when was in Belfast, I was invited to a Burns supper at which the haggis was brought in flaming in whiskey. I’m not sure if that is a modern affectation or dates back centuries. I don’t know if the Italians have a tradition of flaming food in grappa. There is the word 'fiammata' in Italian, but when it comes to cooking, they tend to use the French word 'flambé' which would suggest a cultural importation. Away from grappa, then there is a ‘flaming sambuca’ as a cocktail but that seems to be a 19th century invention at earliest. One wonders also if the Germans and the Austrians flame things is schnapps or the Dutch in gin. There doesn't seem to be much evidence for this, though, as far as I know.

With the making of country wine from almost anything that grows surely distilling to spirit form was discovered yonks ago. And not so difficult, either. I recall helping a fellow teen set up a still to improve his mother's many gallons of cherry wine to brandy form. The first few drops tasted grim as I recall - and very slow and boring to produce. This did not lead very far because our garage distillary blew up that night and the fire chief had lots to say on the subject, as did parents and the rest of the village. But it is possible..... friend went on to join Harwell atomic research. I reckon some form of spirit would be available for high jinks with burning raisons..... passing thought... was mead ever distilled?

Meles meles wrote:

I'm rather surprised that for one of the prime evening slots on Christmas Day the BBC are resorting to a repeat from 40 years ago.

No surprise, Meles. The rest of the schedule isn't up to much.

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NYPD: "Can you describe the people involved in the fracas??"

Witness" White, dressed in Red, not as Jolly as usual"

This is from Wiki:

Modern flambéing became popular in the 19th century. The English Christmas pudding was served flaming in Charles Dickens' 1843 novel, A Christmas Carol: "the pudding... blazing in half of half-a-quarter of ignited brandy". The most common flambé dish appears to have been sweet omelette with rum or kirsch; for example, Alexis Soyer's 1846 cookbook, The Gastronomic Regenerator, gives a recipe for Omelette au Rhum: "...the moment of going to table pour three glasses of rum round and set it on fire". Ida Joscelyne's book, The Marvellous Little Housekeepers (1880), mentions both rum and kirsch; another recipe appears in A.G. Payne's English cookbook, Choice Dishes at Small Cost, of 1882: "Make a sweet omelet, and heat a tablespoonful of kirsch, by holding a light under the spoon. As soon as the spirit catches fire pour it round the omelet, and serve flaming." Perhaps the most famous flambé dish, Crepe Suzette, was supposedly invented in 1895 as an accident.

Priscilla wrote:

...........not in football of course. I am thinking of the heading about Jesus being the Saviour re his winning goal for Man City last night; Temps may well shudder.

Like the graffiti that used to appear in Liverpool in the mid-60s:
"Jesus Saves...............but St John scores on the rebound"

Short history of Christmas Puds:

A History of the Christmas Pudding

In answer t my own question, I happened on a liqueur made in the abbey of St Marie au Desert - in France but what desert that is I have no idea (Paris in August when the city goes on hols?) Anyway, their monastic slurp is made from ditilled meade. I have not tasted this one. I learned long ago that liqueurs were best over ice.... I thought it was naff of me and got joshed about it in UK but now I read most liqueurs are best that way. Indeed yes, I had found that out for myself. (Cointreau on ice always kept me sane when flying) Our family only really indulged in liqueurs at Christmas but it did give me an very early intro to some rather nice tipples as I was always given some in a tiny glass. Of course the glasses were wrong. Chunks of ice in a rummer with a generous slurp of any old monks' distilled beverage poured over it is the way to go. Several of these shorten long flights no end and it's Christmas all the way. And there are several on the market - even from Finland. Anyone tried that one..... made from arctic berries even - whatever they are.

In Slovenija, as well as fruit-based brandies such as slivovica (slivovitz) made from plums or other fruits (sliva is a plum in slovene), they also make a distilled honey 'brandy', which I think is called medu žganje (žganje meaning just 'spirits'). It is deceptively clear, unlike golden-coloured mead, and is incredibly potent. I don't know if it remains the case but it used to be entirely legal in Slovenija for anyone to possess a still to produce distilled liquors for their own home consumption - which many people did, making them to whatever strength they fancied - although numerous commercial makes are readily available too:



And yes, all those monastic tipples: Benedictine, Stellina, Frangelico, Green Chartreuse, Buckfast Abbey Tonic Wine, Dom Pérignon champagne and Trappist beers. Whenever caving in the Chartreuse mountains in western France, visit to the Carthusian monastery's distillery at Voiron near Grenoble was always de rigeur.

So far, no mention of the most important part of Christmas....................which is Chocolate.



and combining chocolate with alcohol we get;

The Guardian has an article discussing The 12 Disasters of Christmas.

The 12 Disasters of Christmas

The first on the Guardian list is the one already mentioned here by Priscilla - the disaster of the too-enormous turkey and the too-small oven. I wonder what Res His Christmas miseries would be? Family guest disasters could certainly be a plausible number two: perhaps a drunken uncle, always an ardent Brexiteer, but now an equally passionate, freedom-fighting anti-vaxxer (with a cold) coming for lunch on the Great Day - plus his born-again woke, vegan daughter (whose heroine is the Duchess of Sussex) - oh, and his wife, also a born-again something or other who, after her fourth glass of strong wine, is wont to start babbling in tongues...?

PS I once served a turkey which was burnt on the outside and frozen inside. Known for ever more as ***'s Turkey Alaska. My mother-in-law also (not the same year) put the Christmas pud in the microwave and melted it. The resulting pool of syrupy, fruity, alcoholic mess was quite nice as a sauce on the ice-cream.

Gifts - now there's a topic that generates visions of misery, catastrophe and ire. I recall a distant year when such things were used, and a husband had gifted his wife a far better camera than his wife had bought him. Then there's getting cheap tat from someone on whom you had splurged out on a luxury item..... and then there's buying a toy for a child who already has had that one - and never liked it much anyway. Then there's the hunt for receipts for all the clothes that will not fit and in styles and  colours that appal despite the weak smiles of thanks.
And so also, OK, my regal friends, Yeh, leave the gold and the  frankincense too, that can probably be gifted on to an elderly aunt, but could we er, possibly exchange the er, myrrh, mmm?