Why Do We Eat Turkey On Christmas Day?

Ask most Westerners which meat they will be eating on Christmas Day and the vast majority will tell you that they will be choosing turkey. Ask them why and an equally large number will tell you that it’s because it is traditional. But is it?

Surprisingly Turkey has only really made it as the nations Christmas Day favorite since the fifties and sixties. In fact even then it was still considered by many to be a once-a-year treat for many families. Now of course with industrialized farming bringing down the cost of rearing the birds, turkey is much more affordable. Which probably accounts for why some Christmas’ there are around ten million birds consumed.

Introduced to Europe in the mid-sixteenth century turkeys have generally been regarded as being a luxury food for the wealthy and the nobility. They were so highly prized that each autumn the birds would be walked from East Anglia to London by drovers. This would take several weeks as the average progress would be around 1 mile per day. A speed which may have something to do with the drovers putting sacking boots around the birds feet to prevent them becoming lame.

Although Elizabeth I is recorded as eating turkey at Christmas it wasn’t until the 1850′s, when Queen Victoria choose it, that it became the dish of choice for the Royal family. At that point the middle classes began to adopt it as well. The most popular breeds were the Norfolk Black and the Cambridge Bronze both of which are still highly regarded today for their rich taste.

If you are joining in the modern “tradition” of eating turkey at Christmas this year here’s something to think about. The first meal eaten on the Moon by Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was cold roast turkey complete with all the usual trimmings!

Christmas Traditions: Not Essential, But Often Worthwhile

There is no right and no wrong way to celebrate Christmas. At least, where Christmas is concerned you do not have to stay with the traditional ways. After all, one of the major messages of Christmas is peace and goodwill. It would be absolutely wrong to start introducing rules as to what constitutes an acceptable form of revelry, above and beyond those already laid down by the law of the land. As long as you stick to the laws which exist, your Christmas can take any form you deem acceptable.

That said, there is a reason that Christmas traditions have become traditional. When the first Christmas mince pies were produced, it is likely that the baker who cooked them had no idea just how much a part of Christmas they would become in many countries. People eat them, however, because they like them. Equally, it is not essential to have a tree in your house for the Christmas period – but people do, and have done for many years it does give a certain festive cachet to the whole occasion.

The main thing to keep in mind about the festive period is that people are supposed to enjoy themselves, and this should not be controlled by an insistence on maintaining traditions. The one Christmas tradition that should always be upheld at Christmas is that people are kind to one another and find a way to get along, even with those people they would ordinarily not speak to. As for the rest of it, people will find their own way.