The Hampshire Family Historian | Volume 51 No.4 | March 2025

Local Group Programmes

Saturday 5th April 10.00 am: [BST] Migration through the UK – Debbie Bradley Wednesday 4th June Portsmouth, A Literary and Pictorial Tour 7.30 pm: [BST] – Matt Wingett Simon concluded the talk by telling us about Christmas drink. Historically it has been warm and potent in order to combat the cold weather. ‘Flip’ was a warm beer with added spices and sometimes brandy or rum and mulled wines, ciders or beers have all survived the passage of time. Punch, also known as ‘Smoking Bishop’ but now almost disappeared, was heated wine and spirits or port with spices and oranges. ‘Lambs Wool’ was ale with apples, spice and sugar. ‘Wassail’ was hot, spiced ale which was shared amongst revellers and marked the end of Twelfth Night. Forthcoming Meetings: You can write or present your family histories in many ways: a basic Word document with photos; an audio recording; a Blog, a Podcast; Creative Journaling (formerly referred to as scrapbooking); an E-book; a website; a book publication. All in all, this was a most inspiring talk and most of us were left with the desire to start, or continue, writing! (December) Christmas food and drink through the ages – Simon & Silvia Fowler This double-act by husband and wife team, Simon & Sylvia Fowler, was both entertaining and informative. Simon began with a brief overview of the history of Christmas explaining how the festival was created originally by Christianising pagan traditions that had gone before. Today Christmas has become a financial extravaganza heralded by the influences of Charles Dickens and Prince Albert during Victorian times. Sylvia’s input took us from the days of the Norman Conquest to the present, explaining how traditional Christmas fare has changed over time depending on availability, cost and fashion. In medieval times, the type of food people ate depended on their class, everyone trying to mimic as best they could the class above them, and because Christmas followed the fasting of Advent, food tended to be extravagant. There were several courses, lots of different meats, with sweet and savoury food all served at the same time. All Christmas fare was spiced with nutmeg, mace and clove. ‘Boar’s Head’ was the traditional main dish until the 1600s when ‘Tudor Pye’ took over. This contained minced meat – not poultry – and was the forerunner of our current mince pies. During the Commonwealth, celebrations were banned by the Puritans but, following the Restoration, Christmas returned, though in not so elaborate a fashion. In his diary, Pepys was the first to mention plum pudding and Goose became the traditional main dish until the 1840s when turkey took over, thanks to Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol”. Potatoes did not become popular until the 18th century when ‘meatless’ mince pies also became the norm. From the 17th to the 19th century, Christmas cake was traditionally named ‘Twelfth Cake’ because it was eaten on Twelfth Night.

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