Dickens

Christmas Boar’s Head, to Goose, to Turkey

The changing Christmas entrée and how Charles Dickens helped standardize the turkey.

Boar’s Head

Before a goose at Christmas, and long before turkey, boar was the star of the English Christmas feast. At the table of the rich in Medieval England a cooked boar’s head was the main attraction. It was so special that it had its own Christmas carol (the Boar’s Head Carol) which would be sung as it was paraded into the hall.

While recipes varied, any way you cooked it the boar’s head was labor intensive. The head would be removed from the body, the skin would be carefully separated from the skull, cured meats and other ingredients would be stuff into the skin, it would be sewn back together, the whole head would be covered in muslin cloth, boiled, garnished, then dressed up with an apple in its mouth and perhaps some black ash to simulate fur.

boar's head Christmas dinners — The amount of labor involved in preparing the boar’s head meant only the wealthiest could afford it.

An added bonus at the table was roasted “gilded peacock”. Since the wow factor of a peacock is its showy feathers, the peacock’s head & skin was removed, the body was roasted, then the bird was put back together to be both edible and a showpiece. Also like the boar’s head it was only found on the tables of the wealthiest elite. That said it was mostly for show since apparently it didn’t taste particularly good.

As for the common people, depending on their finances they might have salted pork of some kind but a reliable alternative was pottage. Pottage was anything cooked in a pot. Special Christmas recipes might add certain spices as a seasonal treat. The most unfortunate of society could expect some of the feast leftovers, trenchers, and other scraps given as donations at the gates of clergy and the upper class. That said after waves of bubonic plague in the mid 14th century, which killed more people than animals, there was more meat available in general for all levels of society.

Goose

The goose became the Christmas entrée of choice in the 16th century when (supposedly) Queen Elizabeth I ordered others to eat roast goose for Christmas because that’s what she was eating when she heard the news of the English victory over the Spanish Armada in 1588.

As a main dish goose was a smart choice since it was something almost everyone could enjoy. Geese can be farmed (unlike wild boar), they don’t lay as many eggs as chickens so there is less reason to keep them around, they don’t provide milk like cows, they are larger than chickens so they can feed more people, and they take up less room than pigs. Geese also make exceptional guard animals (during the time you are raising them … before you cook them).

In the 19th century Queen Victoria ate the traditional boar’s head for Christmas dinner but for most people goose was the standard. A goose was relatively affordable but not cheap. Goose Clubs were layaway programs, frequently run by one’s local pub, where less affluent participants could make installment payments over time in order to have a goose for Christmas. The 1892 Sherlock Holmes story The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle is set at Christmas time and a goose club is a pivotal plot point.

Cooking a goose could be challenging depending on the kitchen. Too close to the fire a goose burns on the outside while being uncooked on the inside. The fat from the bird can drip into the fire causing bursts of flames. Also the size of the bird was difficult to accommodate if other things were being cooked. All of which led many Victorian Londoners to take their geese to their local bakeries who had seasonal side businesses of cooking people’s geese for them in their large bakery ovens (something Scrooge sees when he is traveling with the Ghost of Christmas Present in A Christmas Carol).

Turkey

Turkey comes from North America and some of the first turkeys to reach England were supposedly imported by William Strickland in 1526. He later had the turkey as part of his family crest. Initially turkeys were only for the wealthy since there were so few birds available. They were a status symbol and an exotic delicacy like how peacock had been, but unlike peacock a turkey tasted good.

By the Victorian era turkey was still a luxury but was no longer solely for the ultra rich. It was becoming more accessible to more people. Charles Dickens was a fan of turkey, so much so that the Cratchit family are gifted a prize winning turkey at the end of 1843’s A Christmas Carol.

The success of A Christmas Carol was so great that it not only reinvigorated the celebration of Christmas but it also popularized the idea of having a turkey for Christmas dinner instead of a goose. By the early 20th century advancements in farming both brought the price of turkeys down, and fattened the birds up, so as to make them Christmas feasts for everyone.

Humbug

Humbug the fraud, the hoax, the mint candy.

A humbug is another name for a hoax, a trick, a fraud, something that presents as one thing but is really something else. It was a mid 18th century English slang word that today is perhaps most closely associated with the character of Ebenezer Scrooge in Charles Dickens’s 1843 A Christmas Carol (the most famous Christmas ghost story of all time).

humbug is associated with Ebeneezer Scrooge

When Scrooge barks “Bah! Humbug!” he’s commenting on how Christmas is duplicitous, that he feels Christmas tells people they should be happy when they may have nothing to be happy about. To Scrooge, Christmas presents a face of cheer when beneath the surface the world is still as corrupt and as problematic as before. Scrooge the misanthrope, Scrooge the cantankerous grump. His “Bah! Humbug” establishes a baseline of Scrooge’s dislike of the season, his dim view of humanity, and how much work the three spirits will have to do to redeem him.

Humbug was a popular term for hoaxes and charlatans — While today we think of the word “humbug” mostly with *A Christmas Carol*, it used to be a popular word for charlatans, fraudsters, and hoaxes.

P.T. Barnum, the Prince of Humbug

One man who knew a thing or two about fraud was P.T. Barnum. Nicknamed the Prince of Humbugs, Barnum drew a fine line between what was and wasn’t an acceptable deception. He felt humbugs were acceptable tricks, that it was fine to trick the audience as long as they received something fun in return. One example of this was the Fiji Mermaid which he advertised as a beautiful woman rather than the monstrous animal hybrid he had on display (which was fake either way). If the ends justified the means it was all ok in Barnum’s opinion.

Barnum’s 1865 book The Humbugs of the World documents historic deceptions and the universality of hoaxes. For Barnum his style of humbug tricks were acceptable (not surprisingly) but hoaxes that tricked people out of their money with nothing in return were wrong. He spoke out publicly against psychics and other frauds who tricked and hurt people.

humbug candy — Humbug the striped candies have been popular since the 19th century, but unfortunately were the source of a poisoning scandal in 1858.

Mint Candy

Something that’s not a trick, but is a treat, are humbug candies. Humbugs are striped candies, typically mint flavored, most commonly found in English speaking countries (except the US). While they are probably English in origin, and have existed since at least the 1820s, it’s unknown exactly who invented them or why they are called humbugs.

In the mid 19th century humbugs gained an unwanted spotlight. On October 30, 1858 a batch of humbugs in Bradford, England were accidentally made with arsenic trioxide instead of daft (a filler agent made with powdered limestone & plaster of Paris, used as a sugar replacement to cut cost). A junior druggist scooped the wrong powder and gave it to the assistant candy maker who didn’t notice. This mistake killed 20 people (13 of whom were children) and poisoned an additional 200 people. One positive is this led to the Pharmacy Act of 1868 which, among other things, required poisonous substances to be specially marked to avoid confusion.

A look back at how humbugs were made in 1967.

Grip the Raven

Charles Dickens’s pet raven Grip helped inspire Edgar Allan Poe’s poem The Raven.

In the first half of the 19th century Charles Dickens had a pet raven named Grip who, by all accounts, was quite the handful. Grip was talkative, bossy, and aggressive. She intimidated the family’s mastiff Turk (she would steal food from his bowl) and would also bite the Dickens children. Eventually Dickens exiled Grip to the shed where, being a mischievous raven, she got into a can of white paint (which contained lead). On March 12, 1841 Dickens wrote to his friend, the illustrator Daniel Maclise, that Grip had died.

Because he loved Grip Dickens had her stuffed and mounted in a case complete with a woodland setting of branches and leaves. He also had Maclise create a portrait of her. Despite Grip’s difficult personality it didn’t put Dickens off to having more ravens as pets, the next of which he also named Grip (who, according to Dickens’s daughter Mamie, was also a handful).

Grip the raven inspired Charles Dickens and Edgar Allan Poe.

Quoth the Raven …

In 1842 Dickens and his wife traveled to America. As part of his tour around the states he met with Edgar Allan Poe who had favorably reviewed Dickens’s 1841 novel Barnaby Rudge. In the novel the titular character of Barnaby Rudge has a talkative pet raven whose name just happens to be Grip. Poe was particularly interested in Grip, whom he described as “intensely amusing” and liked that Grip the character was based on Dickens’s own real pet Grip.

A few years after learning about Grip, Poe would write his most defining work, 1845’s The Raven. In the poem a raven flies into the room of the grief-stricken narrator, tormenting him that he will never be reunited with his lost love. It’s widely believed by Poe scholars that the inspiration for the bird in the poem was Grip the raven (both the real Grip and the fictional Grip). There are numerous similarities between the bird in The Raven and Grip the raven in Barnaby Rudge.

the Free Library of Philadelphia

After Dickens died in 1870 Grip was sold at auction. She was eventually bought by Colonel Richard Gimbel (a wealthy member of the Philadelphia department store family) who was an avid collector of both Dickens and Poe. He also purchased the Philadelphia home of Edgar Allan Poe which was later donated to the National Park Service. Grip, as well as the rest of the Gimbel collection of Dickens and Poe artifacts (including the only known copy of The Raven written in Poe’s hand), were bequeathed to the Free Library of Philadelphia in 1971. Today Grip can be found, still in her case, at the end of a series of hallways on the 3rd floor of the Central Library in the Rare Books department.

Grip at the end of the 3rd floor hallway in the Rare Books department of the Philadelphia Free Library — Grip sits in her case at the end of the hallways in the Rare Books department of the Philadelphia Free Library central branch on Vine Street.

Grip the mischievous raven inspired two literary giants. The Raven the poem then went on to inspire untold others including the naming of the Baltimore Ravens (the only football team named after a piece of literature).

Added info: Grip was not the only Dickens pet that had a life after death. After Bob the family cat died Dickens had one of his paws turned into a letter opener.

Also, while crows and ravens are fairly similar there are some easy ways to tell them apart. It’s frequently written that “ravens are larger than crows” but without seeing the two side-by-side it can be difficult if you haven’t previously seen both species. Perhaps the easiest way is the tail feathers which, when in flight, the feathers of a raven come to a point like a “V” (like the “v” in “raven”). A crow’s tail feathers are more of a straight line.

Christmas Ghost Stories

Stemming from ancient pagan traditions, it used to be customary to tell ghost stories at Christmas.

In the northern hemisphere Christmas comes at the darkest time of the year. Years before people gathered together for Christmas they would gather together around fires (such as the Yule log) for various pagan winter holidays on the longest nights of the year. In the cold dark they would tell stories. Similar to Halloween, it was thought that in these long nights the veil between this world and the next was thin allowing spirits to pass back and forth. As such many people told ghost stories of revenants back from the dead, spirits, and other supernatural creatures.

As people adopted Christianity, winter ghost stories went from being a pagan tradition to a Christmas tradition. By the 17th century the Lord and Protector of England Oliver Cromwell tried to eliminate Christmas ghost stories because of their pagan origins. Cromwell also outlawed a host of other Christmas traditions including caroling and feasts (and that’s not even the worst of Cromwell’s legacy). These traditions eventually came back post-Cromwell but by then some were seen as old-fashioned.

A Christmas Carol

Christmas ghost stories achieved a new kind of popularity in the 19th century Victorian Era through the Industrial Revolution. As the oral tradition moved to print, old traditional stories as well as new Christmas stories saw a surge in popularity through magazines, novellas, and book collections. Charles Dickens’s 1843 A Christmas Carol took the tradition to a new level.

A Christmas Carol is a ghost story. It’s easier to see it as a ghost story if you remove the Christmas trappings by placing it in another time of year. Unlike the traditional Christmas ghost stories Dickens reinvented the genre by including moral lessons of forgiveness, good deeds, generosity, etc. His ghosts served as a catalyst towards redemption which was very different than the ghosts of other stories which were primarily used for a good scare. Soon the redemptive, somewhat saccharine, aspects of A Christmas Carol were adopted by other authors and the scary ghost portions of Christmas stories slowly fell by the wayside.

Today we rarely associate scary ghost stories with Christmas. Similar to how Santa Claus and Krampus are a seasonal version of good cop/bad cop, we’ve mostly relegated our scary stories to Halloween while telling our hopeful happy stories at Christmas. Still, if you were to put aside the modern concept of Christmas, this dark cold time of year is the perfect time to gather around the fire and tell scary stories in the darkness.

Added info: take a trip through time and read some collections of Victorian Christmas ghost stories.

Charles Dickens and the Little Ice Age

Charles Dickens spent most of his life in the “Little Ice Age” where his earliest Christmases were snowy, which influenced later pop culture.

The Little Ice Age was a several hundred year period of unusually cold weather around parts of the Northern Hemisphere. Depending on how you want to define it, the period ran from either the 1300s or 1500s to around 1850. There are various suggested causes for this cold weather, but the result was cooler summers and especially cold winters.

In England the winters could get so cold that the River Thames would freeze. Over the centuries there were 24 times when the river was solid enough to host the River Thames frost fair, a winter celebration on the frozen river complete with vendors, dancing, sports, and more. The last such festival was in 1814 during which they walked an elephant across the frozen river.

Bob Cratchit carrying Tiny Tim in a snowy London from *A Christmas Carol*

Charles Dickens

Born in 1812 in the south of England, Dickens’s family moved to London in 1815. As part of the Little Ice Age, the first 8 Christmases of Dickens’s life were snowy white Christmases. At a developmental stage in his life these white Christmases had a significant influence on Dickens’s idea of what Christmas should be. Dickens included a white Christmas in several stories, the first of which was 1836’s The Pickwick Papers and later, and most famously, in 1843’s A Christmas Carol.

The enormous popularity of A Christmas Carol, and the popularity of Dickens in general, greatly influenced our western cultural idea of what Christmas should be. It helped revive the celebration of Christmas in Britain, which had been on the decline during the Industrial Revolution. Snowy white landscapes, crackling fires, hot meals, mulled wine, mistletoe, wrapped packages, carols & merriment, it all became part of the ideal Christmas.

The 1942 movie *Holiday Inn* gave us the hit song *White Christmas* sung by Bing Crosby. The 1954 movie *White Christmas* (seen above) also featured Bing Crosby singing *White Christmas.*

Our idea of a snowy white Christmas is directly linked to the staying power of Charles Dickens and that, for a young Dickens, Christmas was always white. After the Little Ice Age ended southern England has not see many white Christmases. Today there is around a 9% probability of a white Christmas in London, but the idea of a snowy Christmas persists. The 1942 movie Holiday Inn, which gave us the hit song White Christmas sung by Bing Crosby, only furthered the Dickens idea of a snowy Christmas.