What do I like about Christmas? Well, the fact that it is a holiday is nice. And that, frankly, is about it. The rest of it is commercially-motivated and sponsored nonsense. I yield to nobody in my respect for Christianity but it might be useful to know that Jesus Christ was not really born on December 25; the whole thing is made up. (Keep reading!)
What do I like the least? The food probably. Ever wondered why nobody ever wants plum pudding except on Christmas when we are expected to eat the damn thing?
Well, basically because it is a rubbish pudding. It’s not even made with plums. It’s made with raisins and the name is a hangover from another century.
In the UK, it is traditional to eat turkey on Christmas Eve. Now, I like the idea of a roast fowl. But give me Peking Duck or even a flavourful roasted free range chicken, any day. Turkey is the worst of all edible birds.
I don’t know if you have eaten it but turkey has dry, tasteless meat that they struggle to add some flavour to with stuffing. And with cranberry sauce, which is pretty disgusting on its own, anyway.
I have no idea where the Brits got the idea that it might be appropriate to roast a large, favourless bird every Christmas eve but it is certainly not an ancient tradition. For a start, turkeys are not even native to the UK. They were brought there from America. And Americans have the sense not to eat them at Christmas. Americans eat all kinds of other food including ham, which, oddly enough, is what many Brits ate before the turkey tradition took hold.
Perhaps it is because the turkey is, in fact, an immigrant to the UK and the current mood in Britain is anti-immigrant but turkey sales are certainly plummeting this year. More and more Brits are opting for ham, for more interesting birds and for other kinds of Christmas dinners. If this keeps up then the good news is that Brits might actually eat something edible on Christmas. And turkeys will probably be deported.
(Who knows? Perhaps Suella Braverman will chase the UK’s remaining turkeys all the way to Rwanda. As Oscar Wilde said, in another context: “The unspeakable in pursuit of the uneatable”.)
America does not avoid the turkey entirely, however. They don’t eat it on Christmas but it is part of their traditional Thanksgiving dinner.
What is Thanksgiving? Well, on the minus side, it is a peculiarly American holiday in which Americans remember how their ancestors jointly ‘celebrated’ with native Americans (or ‘Indians’ as they called them) before killing them all off. On the plus side, at least there is a logic to the choice of turkey: It is an American bird and it reached North America even before the potato did. (The potato is South American in origin.)
Americans have worked out that the easiest way to make the turkey slightly less inedible is to not oven-roast it but to deep-fry it. I have tried both versions and yes, the deep fried version is marginally moister.
Why do they eat such disgusting food in the West on their holidays and why do they endow it with bogus significance?
Christmas, as we have seen, is a bit of humbug. Nobody knows when Jesus was born. The date of December 25 was only agreed on 300 years after the founding of Christianity. Some Christians (outside of the West) prefer other dates for Jesus’s birth. The Armenian church, for instance, still celebrates its Christmas on January 6.
One theory is that December 25 was the date of a pre-Christian (‘pagan’) festival and the church simply adopted that date. But even this is controversial.
But whenever he was born, one thing is clear: Neither Jesus nor the early apostles and disciples were made to eat turkeys. (Turkey did not get to the Middle East for another 1,600 years.)
This business of adopting pre-Christian festivals may have something to do with Easter too. There is no conclusive evidence that Jesus was crucified on Good Friday and resurrected on Easter Monday. These are made up dates. But even if we are to accept these dates as accurate, Easter food remains a problem.
The food most commonly associated with the Easter festivities is the egg. And the animal we celebrate during that period is the Easter Bunny. (Funny because rabbits do not lay eggs.)
There is no mention of any rabbits in any of the original gospels. The most notable mention of a rabbit is in Leviticus (which is not usually regarded as an important part of the Bible) and that says that the rabbit is unclean. (Leviticus is regarded as an Old Testament text and predates Jesus.)
So why on earth do we celebrate the resurrection by eating chocolate eggs and putting up cutesy pictures of a rabbit?
Same reason. The church adopted a pre-Christian festival that celebrated fertility. The egg is a symbol of fertility. (Through not when it is made of chocolate, admittedly.) The rabbit is another fertility symbol. None of it has anything to do with Jesus.
I sometimes feel bad for western Christians when I see them eating strange foods at these made up festivals. Jesus never had to eat a roast turkey, so why should they? Why conflate a joyful occasion like the resurrection with chocolate eggs? Jesus never ate chocolate either. ( He couldn’t have. There was no chocolate in Palestine).
It is, of course, their religious tradition and we must respect that. But it is hard to escape the feeling that the excessive commercialisation of these festivals goes against the original spirit of Christianity and everything that Jesus stood for.
Do I sound like the Grinch who stole Christmas? Well maybe. I am just biased because I don’t like their festive dishes .Give me Eastern festive dishes any day: Chinese mooncakes, Holi gujiya, Eid biryani and seviyan. These may or not be born of an authentic historical tradition (though I suspect that some probably are).
But at least they are tasty!
The Taste With Vir: What do I like the least about Christmas?
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19.12.2023
What do I like about Christmas? Well, the fact that it is a holiday is nice. And that, frankly, is about it. The rest of it is commercially-motivated and sponsored nonsense. I yield to nobody in my respect for Christianity but it might be useful to know that Jesus Christ was not really born on December 25; the whole thing is made up. (Keep reading!)
What do I like the least? The food probably. Ever wondered why nobody ever wants plum pudding except on Christmas when we are expected to eat the damn thing?
Well, basically because it is a rubbish pudding. It’s not even made with plums. It’s made with raisins and the name is a hangover from another century.
In the UK, it is traditional to eat turkey on Christmas Eve. Now, I like the idea of a roast fowl. But give me Peking Duck or even a flavourful roasted free range chicken, any day. Turkey is the worst of all edible birds.
I don’t know if you have eaten it but turkey has dry, tasteless meat that they struggle to add some flavour to with stuffing. And with cranberry sauce, which is pretty disgusting on its own, anyway.
I have no idea where the Brits got the idea that it might be appropriate to roast a large, favourless bird every Christmas eve but it is certainly not an ancient tradition. For a start, turkeys are not even native to the UK. They were brought there from America. And Americans have the sense not to eat them at Christmas. Americans eat all kinds of other food including ham,........
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