How many sleeps until Christmas? Are you counting, or are you hiding under the bed pretending it’s not happening? Well, no more pretending….Christmas is coming!

Well, just in case you’ve lost count, you’ll be excited to know that there are only 33 days until Christmas Day, yay!

We’ll soon be announcing our yummy new Christmas menu, exciting! But in the meantime, have you ever wondered just why we eat what we do on Christmas Day? Why does Turkey top festive menus all over the country, and just where did the idea of a cracker come from??

Read on for our Christmas Dinner history in a nutshell (or should that be ….

• Turkey – goose and cockerel were the Christmas dishes of choice once upon a time (or peacock or swan if you were very wealthy). But in the 15th century, the turkey was introduced to Europe and because it was cheap and quick to fatten, it soon became a popular festive feast.
• Mince Pies – in medieval times mince pies used to be one pie – one huge pie baked on Christmas Eve and stuffed with chopped beef, suet, nuts, spices and fruit, of which whole, dried plums were an important constituent. These days we like our mince pies in mini form. Yum.
• Christmas pud was once called Plum Pudding (although curiously it didn’t contain any plums). It was first made in the 1300s as a kind of thick porridge, made with beef, mutton, raisins, currants, prunes and wine. A few centuries later, the meat was left out and it was made into more of a cake texture. Traditionally you must stir your Christmas pud from East to west in honour of the three wise men. Happy stirring!
• Pigs in blankets – no festive feast would be complete without a juicy pig in a big fat blanket! It is exactly what it says it is really – a pork sausage wrapped up in a blanket of bacon. They have been traditionally served with Christmas dinner since the Victorian era, and in America they are sometimes accompanied by Devils on Horseback which are prunes wrapped in bacon. Yum.
• Crackers – ok, so not technically part of the edible feast, but they are still essential for any Christmas dinner…… in 1847 a sweet shop owner in London invented the humble cracker after he saw French sweets were wrapped in paper with a twist at each end. He made his own version, and each had a love motto inside. They proved popular so in the following years he made the parcels bigger and included a small trinket and a “bang”. The Christmas cracker was born, and it is alleged that by 1900, Mr Smith was selling 13 million crackers a year!