Christmas Food History

Summarizing what Christmas celebrants used to serve at their festive dinners is no simpler than listing what eaters today consider requisite holiday foods: For various families on a single city block, it might not feel like Christmas without getting drunk on eggnog; slicing up a pannetone; gorging on baccala; tucking into a roasted goose; slurping down glogg or munching on stollen.

Americans' conception of Christmas dinner has always turned on such inalienable attributes as ethnic heritage and birthplace: A first-generation Vietnamese-American living in Louisiana probably doesn't set the same Christmas table as a fourth-generation Swedish-American with a home in northern Minnesota.

Still, it's possible to get some sense of what early Americans deemed standard Christmas fare by examining what they served their society's least fortunate members. Holiday menus from prisons provide a pretty good guide to which foods Americans thought of as so indispensable that even robbers, counterfeiters and killers deserved to enjoy them come Dec. 25.
Treating convicts to a proper Christmas meal became an annual tradition in many jails by the mid-19th century, with editorial boards tut-tutting at those wardens who dared deprive their charges. Reporting that inmates of New York's City Prison made do with bread and molasses-sweetened coffee in 1865, the New York Times added: "We put in a plea for next year that a special appropriation be made for all concerned."

Much more to the Times' liking was the celebration staged by the Ludlow Street Jail in 1871, at which an imprisoned ventriloquist put on a show and cooks served up a feast of "turkey, roast beef, chicken, duck, corned beef, pudding, pies, vegetables and fruit."

Eating a large bird for Christmas is a European tradition that dates back centuries, with turkeys appearing on continental tables as early as the 16th century. While turkey was a pricey indulgence for Old World diners, who typically stuck to goose, the abundance of wild turkeys in the United States helped make them an affordable Christmas entrée on this side of the Atlantic. In 1886, New York City served its prison population 3,500 pounds of turkey -- along with 50 barrels of potatoes, 40 barrels of onions, 20 barrels of pork and 10 barrels of cranberries.

In 1893, New York City prisoners -- including anarchist Emma Goldman, who likely hadn't celebrated Christmas beyond the confines of Blackwell's Island -- consumed almost four times as much chicken as turkey. But a wide range of side dishes, including plum pudding and mince pie, accompanied the more modest birds.

Plum pudding and mince pie were both meat dishes when they entered the Christmas canon in the 16th century, although only a trace of meat remained in most recipes three centuries hence. Both treats leaned heavily on dried fruit, spirits and spice, which made them a natural fit for the holiday season. By the time plum pudding was served in New York City's jails, it was commonly called "Christmas pudding."

Although sweet fruits have long been associated with Christmas, it took the advent of reliable refrigeration and canning techniques to make fruit in its un-dried state available to most everyone. In 1893, when the warden at Sing Sing "gave the convicts the privilege of singing and hallooing as much as they chose between the hours of 3 and 6 in the afternoon," he also gave them grapes and apples in celebration of the holiday. In 1916, every Sing Sing prisoner was gifted a box "containing an orange, a box of dates, mixed candies, cigarettes and a Christmas card." (Thanks to an anonymous donor, each prisoner also received his own large mince pie and a slice of pumpkin pie for lunch.)

New York's penal feasts were so complete that the Chicago Tribune in 1888 incredulously reported that the city's ne'er-do-wells angled to get themselves locked up for Christmas dinner: "Everyone had turkey who could buy it or go to jail."

"Your only crime is not having sense enough to have your Christmas dinner at the expense of the city," a Brooklyn magistrate chastised a trio of homeless men charged with loitering in 1938. "You've won your case, but you've lost your turkey."

By the 1930s, the cost of feeding prisoners in high Christmas style gave rise to a new annual tradition: Transferring inmates to Sing Sing.

"One purpose is to save the expense of providing them with a special Christmas dinner and gifts," the Times explained in 1933.

Although the city ultimately downgraded its Christmas feasts, the menu presented on Rikers Island in 1977, when Mayor Ed Koch joined a group of prisoners for dinner, included many of the items that defined domestic Christmas eats as far back as 1865. Mince pie and plum pudding were missing, but there was poultry, potatoes, vegetables, pie and fruit -- albeit in powdered form.

As the Times reported: "The meal they shared consisted of chicken soup, roast chicken, hearts of lettuce, sweet potatoes, peas, apple pie, coffee and grape Kool-Aid."