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!

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