Its Christmas! What did your ancestors eat for Christmas Dinner?

Christmas celebrations only really started to happen in the UK in the mid to late nineteenth century. Working folk may not even have had the day off as it was not considered a holiday, though after Queen Victoria married Prince Albert in 1840 their celebrations of Christmas are thought to have influenced the start of Christmas celebrations as we know it today.

If your family history is full of ‘ordinary’ folk, the labourers and working people, their Christmas probably looked a bit different to how we know it now. Some employers would expect their workers to work on Christmas day even if only for a few hours in the morning. People may have scrimped and saved to provide a good meal and presents may have been a home-made doll, a rag rug or a lucky child may receive a coin, while a naughty child would get a piece of coal!

Christmas dinner was a bit different too. A couple of hundred years ago the idea of each home having an oven of their own in order to cook a meal or bake bread would have been inconceivable. It was common, particularly in rural areas for villages to have communal ovens. In some places they were linked to the Church as was the case in the village of Corbridge in Northumberland with its communal oven built into the walls of St Andrew’s Church.  Throughout the year, villagers would bake their bread in the oven and later queue to get their baked goods once it was ready. Bread was an important part of the diet in those times even though they had to pay for the privilege of using the oven. At Christmas often these ovens were used to cook meat too. The most common would have been goose, as turkey was rare until the end of the 19th century. In order to afford the goose, there were goose clubs that people would save into through the year for the meal at Christmas.

The Communal Oven at Corbridge in Northumberland.

Corbridge would have been a small village in the 1860's but a quick look at the census can give us some information about what went on there.

In 1861, according to the census there was a young couple, John and Jane Denison, both in their late 20’s, living on Market Place, Corbridge, with their 10 month old baby boy, Joseph. John worked as an Agricultural Labourer and their home was just a few yards away from the Church. You can imagine that Jane probably made her bread at home and proved it by the fire, carefully marking the top so that she could identify it from her neighbour’s loaves. Then she only had a short walk to the Church to put it in the oven. Living so close by maybe she enjoyed meeting with friends and neighbours as they came to wait for their bread. Then at Christmas, if they could afford it perhaps she cooked a goose too. I bet the whole street smelt of roasted meat!

Looking at the surroundings of where your ancestors lived can give clues to their family stories and knowing a little about the traditions of the time can add detail and colour to your family story.

Feel free to contact me if you would like help with your family history research.