In the midst of the Christmas festivities of 1577, the parson of the Cheshire village of Winwick preached against “gluttons and dronkerdes” who “thincke they maye eate and drinke as much as they will” during the season of goodwill. This “oftentimes” meant consuming “so much as they cannot disgest”, cramming “themselves like swine… till they bee out of theyr wittes like beastes”. Sound familiar?
Since at least the ninth century, Christmas has been associated with feasting and mirth in the Christian tradition. In fact, in the medieval period, Christmas was just the start of 12 full days of riotous consumption and celebration that ended on Twelfth Night (5 January) with another massive blowout.
Today, turkey takes centre stage on the Christmas Day menu. Native to the Americas, turkey arrived in Britain only in the 1520s and, though it featured in feasts of some of Britain’s wealthiest people, alongside swan and peacock, it wasn’t until the early 20th century that turkey came to be associated with the holiday. Instead, beef or goose were the roast meats of choice; earlier medieval Christmases often featured brawn – preserved salted boar’s meat or pork.
Denne historien er fra Christmas 2023-utgaven av BBC History UK.
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Denne historien er fra Christmas 2023-utgaven av BBC History UK.
Start din 7-dagers gratis prøveperiode på Magzter GOLD for å få tilgang til tusenvis av utvalgte premiumhistorier og 9000+ magasiner og aviser.
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Viking mussels
ELEANOR BARNETT digs into archaeological research to recreate a Viking-cum-AngloSaxon seafood dish from medieval York
Fingers, frog's and fairies
Fortune telling was all the rage in the 16th and 17th centuries, and practitioners would stop at nothing to tap in to the supernatural. Martha McGill tells a story of Highland seers, tarot cards and encounters with the spirit world
Nothing matches being with Alexander the Great on foot in the Hindu Kush
AT OUR LITTLE FILM COMPANY, MAYA VISION, we recently took the decision to digitise all of the rushes of our key films so that we could dispose of hundreds of boxes of tapes that had been kept in storage, throwing out stuff we thought we would never need again.
Library of the dead
Highgate Cemetery, created as a fashionable resting place for wealthy Victorian dead, is a veritable who's who of London's great and good. PETER ROSS roams the avenues of this most atmospheric necropolis
Slavery, exploitation and racism. These tragedies have long dominated histories of Africa. But there's another way to tell this story. And it's one that puts Africans right at the centre of their continent's extraordinarily rich and vibrant past
An 1414, in the Chinese city of Nanjing, a giraffe caused a stir. Amid a crowd of shocked, noble spectators, an official, leading the creature via a rope tied round its face, presented it to China's Yongle emperor. His officials said it was a qilin - an auspicious unicorn - which his sage governance had made appear.
England's forgotten hero
When the Hundred Years' War was reaching a climax, one man was fighting tenaciously to secure the English claim to the French crown. So why, asks Joanna Arman, is Henry V's formidable brother, John, Duke of Bedford, not better known?
HENRY III AND THE MAGNA CARTA THAT MATTERED
King John's sealing of a charter at Runnymede in 1215 is one of the most feted moments of the Middle Ages. Yet, writes David Carpenter, it was the charter issued by his son 10 years later that became fundamental to England's history
Gutenberg publishes a pioneering new book
‘The printing press triggers an information revolution
How empire ruptured rural Britain
We know that enslaved Africans and their descendants suffered in the distant colonies of empire. But, as Corinne Fowler explains, the colonial system also had dire impacts on people in the countryside of the 'motherland'
"I FELT VERY ALONE IN A WORLD GONE HORRIBLY MAD"
It was a moment of possibilities, dislocation and dread. Dan Todman tells the story of the 1.5 million urban Britons evacuated to the countryside at the start of the Second World War
