ISSUE 83, HOLIDAY REVELRY, Part 1: Christmas Pie
Christmas Pie
We know the nursery rhyme:
Little Jack Horner sat in a corner, eating a Christmas pie.
He stuck in his thumb and pulled out a plumb
And said what a good boy am I!
Do you know the alternate version?
So youthful Horner roll’d his roguish eye,
Culled the dark plumb from out his Christmas pie,
And cried, in self applause, what a great boy am I!
Plum puddings have adorned Christmas since antiquity. But were plums in Christmas Pie? Christmas Pie, too, is an ancient dish, steeped in lore and obscured by mystery. Some identify it as Mince Pie. But let’s not go with that equivalence just yet.
Question #1: is it a large pie divided among company, each celebrant receiving a slice, or does each person receive a small pie just for themselves? A New York newspaper in December 1806 in an appreciation of Christmas, noted a mother “giving a Christmas pie to each of our children. Yet in the British Christmas of yore, accounts suggest a massive pie. Consider this account of an old Scottish Christmas of the 18th century and earlier, presented in verse. After the Boar’s Head (always first in these revels),
The wassel round in good brown bowls,
Garnished in ribbons, clithely trowls,
There the huge sirloin reeked; hard by
Plum porridge stood, and Christmas pie;
Nor failed old Scotland to produce,
At such high tide, her savoury goose.
How vast were feast Christmas Pies? In 1825, the New York American spoke of a famous Christmas Pie served by Mr. Roberts of Fargate: “The crust was made of 56 lbs of flour, and the contents consist of 30 rabbits, 43 lbs. of pork, 12 lbs. of veal, and 20 lbs. of butter, pepper, etc.” This was a savory pie of meat, fat, and spice—no fruits (plums), no sugar, and no mention of alcohol. So we are getting the suggest of a range of contents—from meats exclusively to meats with fruits.
In England there were distinct regional variations. In Yorkshire the filling of Christmas Pie consisted “of a goose, sometimes two, and that with the addition of half a dozen fowls.” There was a great deal of antiquarian fascination with old Christmas traditions in the antebellum period. American provincial newspapers ran many articles detailing the dishes consumed on Christmas day in the Old Country. A Catskill paper in October 1827 observed,
The mince pie, and the Christmas pie, those ‘favourite peculiars’ of the Christmas festival had also their appropriate derivation. The former being a compound of the choicest productions of the East, represents the offerings made by the wise men, who came from afar to worships, bringing spices. The coffin shape of the true old English Christmas-pie ‘is in imitation of the manger’ where in the infant Jesus was laid. ‘This pastry is a learned composition, being a mixture of neats tongues, chicken, eggs, sugar, raisins, lemon and orange peel, with wines and various kinds of spyceries.” Yet change did come to these old Christmas formulae. The Americanization of the Christmas Pie took place in the 2nd quarter of the 19th century when the New World Turkey supplemented the goose in the center of the Yorkshire Christmas Pie. A hotel pie composed in 1843 reveals this ammendment. The gargantuan dimensions remain from earlier community pies, but the shape has morphed from a coffin to an oval:
In shape it is an oval, and beautifully illustrated with devices cut in pastry, emblematical of the season; measures 84 inches round, extreme length 30 inches, width 21 inches, and height of the crust 9 inches. It contains four stones of flour and 12 pounds of butter and suet, a brace of pheasants, a brace of partridges, two geese, two rabbits, ten chickens, six ducks, two tongues, one turkey, and six pounds of ham.
So what of the confusion of Mince Pie and Christmas Pie? How did that come about. It came about because of the Puritan War on Christmas in the 1600s. The Puritans considered the feasting and revelry of traditional Christmas a “ceremony of carnal idolatry” in which pleasing the flesh entirely eclipsed the spiritual meaning of the advent of the savior. It was the most kill joy of Puritan campaigns and the direct ancestor of extreme evangelical diatribes against “Satan Trees” and “Satan Claus.” The ancient festive pie of fowls, meat, fat, and spices could not be cast out from the national pantry in Britain. ]It was too deeply ingrained in English taste. But it could be rebranded and disassociated from Christmas revelry. Hence “Mince Pie” instead of “Idolatry in a crust.” The Mince Pie once it had its own name began to transmute into something more fruity, less savory, and decidedly less meaty. Suet still in the mix. Goose not so much—at least it was not listed on the ingredients label of the Cross & Blackwell’s Mince Pie filling the last time I looked.
Sources: Salem Gazette (December 1, 1812), 2. “Christmas,” Boston Intelligencer (December 25, 1819), 1. “A Brobdignagian Pie,” New York American (February 5, 1825), 4. “Christmas Ceremonies in England and France,” Salem Literary and Commercial Observer (December 24, 1825), 1. “Christian Ceremonies,” Greene County Republican (October 31, 1827), 2. “A Christmas Pie,” Boston Daily Evening Transcript (February 4, 1843), 2.