If you didn’t know, carp is regarded as a delicacy in Poland, particularly at Christmas. Apparently it is common for the fish to be caught in rivers and kept alive in the bath until Christmas Eve.
Indeed, The Daily Mail reported recently that concerns about poaching by Eastern Europeans immigrants were such as to require the Environment Agency to spend an additional £150,000 on protecting our rivers.
To meet the demand from the large Eastern European community who live in this country, supermarket retailers Sainsury’s and Tesco have announced that they will be stocking carp this Christmas.
For millions of us carp will not be on the menu for Christmas and the traditional meal will consist of turkey with ‘all the trimmings’ followed by pudding topped with brandy sauce.
If you include all the sweets and alcohol that is consumed, you can expect to take in around 7000 calories.
Given that our normal intake is 2000 Christmas can be quite a shock to our digestive system. The guilt we suffer is one of the reasons gymnasiums are so keen to sign new members in January though they will usually demand a year’s subscription knowing that most people will give up long before Easter!
As well as being a celebration of the birth of Christ (see below for ‘some’ clarification), Christmas is, of course, good news for business.
Most retailers expect to have increased trade and some depend on having a good Christmas. Woolworths, a notable casualty of the recession, collapsed in November 2008 because it was so far in debt it could no longer raise sufficient in order to pay its suppliers.
Woolworths came to symbolise Christmas by the fact that sold an array of goods that were perfect for stocking fillers and through its television advertisements that were significant for their length, sometimes taking up a whole commercial break, and the use of celebrities.
If you want to engage in a bit of nostalgia, have a look at them on the net. They have a sense of innocence that has been lost in recent years and we increasingly buy our presents online; hence the invention of ‘Black Friday’ and ‘Mega Monday’.
Ensuring that shops are adequately stocked in the run-up to Christmas requires logistical planning (and growing) so that all the things we want to buy are there.
In a BBC television programme last week, Christmas Supermarket Secrets, Greg Wallace gave insights into how the big retailers ensure that this occurs.
It is strangely comforting to discover that the item that is the top seller is the common potato followed by chocolates and mince pies which originated in the 13th century when brought back to England by crusaders and contained meat with fruit and spices.
Apparently, some 10 million turkeys will be consumed and one quarter of the annual sales of Brussels sprouts occurs at Christmas.
It might be asked why we eat turkey at Christmas?
Turkey is not an indigenous creature, only arriving in this country in the sixteenth century, and the very traditional Christmas meal would have been goose, chicken or rabbit which were all relatively cheap. Given that at that time we were an agricultural nation locally reared beef was another option.
Turkey was for many centuries seen as a luxury food and in Tudor times replaced smaller birds such as the swan as the choice of meat at feasts.
It was only relatively recently in the 1950s that turkey become popular among the working classes due to a relative increase in wages coupled with a reduced cost as more farmers bred them.
Even before Christ it was common for a celebration to take place on 25th December in recognition of the winter solstice though there is much debate and some confusion about why this date was chosen rather than actual the shortest day of the year which occurs a few days earlier.
One theory is this date was the winter solstice in the old Julian calendar when the Saxons held a feast called ‘Modranecht’ or ‘Geol’ in veneration of Mother Nature’s fertility
The Roman festival celebrating the sun god Sol Invictus was held on 25th December though this was established in 274 AD.
Additionally the Christian theologian Hippolytus of Rome (170-235 AD), had claimed that Jesus was born on 25th December.
Another theory is that another Roman festival, Saturnalia, was celebrated over the period 17th-25th December by feasting, drinking and gatherings of families who exchanged gifts providing a foretaste of the commercialisation now so endemic of contemporary Christmas.
But it is during the reign of Queen Vitoria and Germany that the origins of aspects commonly regarded as characteristic of Christmas such as mistletoe, crackers (invented by Thomas Smith in 1840) and cards (invented by Henry Cole in 1843) were popularised.
Though their origins, like mistletoe, are Pagan, trees became a popular way to celebrate Christmas in Germany in the sixteenth century. And if you have ever wondered why you kiss under the mistletoe it is believed to have been in honour of Frigga the Norse goddess of love who was associated with it.
The Christmas wreath represents the circle of life and death and the holly is symbolic of the crown of thorns placed on Christ’s head before his crucifixion; the red berries representing drops of his blood
An illustration of Queen Victoria and Prince Albert with their children around a tree decorated with candles cemented the notion that this was a proper way to celebrate. If nothing else it was a pleasant way to brighten the darkest period of winter, especially during the Industrial Revolution.
And the influence of Charles Dickens through his novel A Christmas Carol published in 1843 telling the story of miser Ebenezer Scrooge should not be forgotten.
The invention of electricity allowed Edward Johnson in 1882 to invent electric lights for the tree in the US.
One character that is absolutely synonymous with Christmas is Father Christmas.
The fourth century Turkish bishop monk, St Nicholas of Myra also referred to as ‘Nikolaos the Wonderworker’, who was known for his charitable acts of giving to the poor is believed to be the basis of the modern Father Christmas. St Nick was popular in Germany and the Netherlands where he was known as Sinterklass.
When Dutch immigrants arrived in America they brought Sinterklass with them where in the nineteenth century he evolved into what we know as Santa Claus. In the early part of the last century Santa Claus appeared everywhere to promote the spirit of giving (and buying) at Christmas.
As everyone probably knows the association of a red suit and flowing white beard was the result of a 1930s Coca-Cola marketing campaign. Rudolph ‘the red-nosed’ reindeer was also a marketing invention in 1938
The origin of Boxing Day (usually referred to as St Stephen’s Day outside the UK) is believed to be due to money donated to church boxed being given to the needy though it was also the day when servants or tradespeople received gifts, a ‘Christmas box’ from their employers.
Christmas puddings are believed to been a snack that hunters carried when on long journeys and the tradition of putting coins in was a representation of the Wise Men’s gifts.
Christmas carols (the word carol is from the French word carole which means a circle dance with accompaniment by singers though derived from the Latin choraula) are believed to have originated as an old English custom referred to as ‘wassailing’ which is a toast of long-life to neighbours. It was until the 13th century that they became part church services having been introduced by St. Francis of Assisi.
Fascinatingly in medieval times it was common to have a pig’s or boar’s head with mustard as the Christmas meal.
There some peculiar customs associated with Christmas.
In Catalonia and other parts of Spain, Portugal and Italy what are known as ‘caganers’ are placed in nativity scenes and consist of figures that are crouching whilst defecating.
Don’t ask why!
Also in Catalonia is the tradition of making a creature out of a log with four legs made of sticks; known as the Cage tio or Tion de Nadal. Though children in December take care of it and keep it warm and ‘feed’ it on Christmas day they beat the log with sticks to make it defecate.
Again, don’t ask why!
In Ukraine it is usual for people to put an artificial spider and its web in the Christmas tree. Apparently, there is a tale of a poor widow whose tree was decorated by a spider’s web which when touched by sunlight on Christmas Day turned to gold and silver.
And in Japan since the 1970s it is traditional for east Kentucky Fried Chicken on Christmas day and for approximately $40 you also receive cake and champagne.
In Estonia it is common for the family to share a sauna on Christmas Eve and in Greenland a delicacy for the festive season is mattak which is raw whale skin and blubber that is wrapped in seal skin and which has been buried for months until it is perfectly decomposed.
Norwegians they hide the broom after dinner on Christmas Eve so that wicked witches won’t steal them. But in Italy there are is a good witch, La Befana, who delivers gifts for Christmas. Like the tradition of leaving food for Santa, if you Le Bafana is provided with a glass of wine she may sweep your floor if you have been good!
Such believes and traditions also occur here during the Christmas period.
In some Welsh villages there is the ritual of Mari Lwyd in which people parade in a decorated mare’s skull and white sheet whilst singing carols.
If you do any cursory research you will find all manner of interesting ‘facts’ about Christmas.
To conclude this blog my favourite is the calculation that in order to visit all of the 2.1 billion children under the age of 18 on Christmas Eve, Santa would have to make some 840 million stops and travel in his sleigh over 221 million miles at a speed of over 650 miles per second with a time between each house of 2/10,000 of a second and requiring a rate of acceleration of 12.19 million miles per second.
That is some going and it is no wonder he only does it once a year!
Happy Christmas and a prosperous 2014.
