I Just Learned Why We Eat Turkey At Christmas, And I'm Gobblesmacked

I know there are some exceptions, but let’s be real here ― very few of us would eat turkey of our own volition. 

56% of us opt for the festive poultry at our Christmas table, regardless of whether we enjoy it the rest of the year. 

But why ― especially considering Christmas dinners in the Middle Ages used to feature a pickled boar’s head in place of the American bird?

(By the way, there was even a song written for the boar’s head ― it was sung as the platter was brought in, and went: 

The boar’s head in hands I bring,
with garlands gay & birds singing!
I pray you all to help me sing, who are at this banquet!
The boar’s head I understand,
Is chief service in all this land!
Wheresoever it may be found, it is served with mustard!...).

So where did the turkey come in?

The fowl didn’t reach Europe ’til the 1500s, the Museum of English Rural Life writes. 

And while a 1573 poem from Tudor farmer Thomas Tusser mentioned turkeys in a list of possible Christmas mains ― “Biefe, mutton, & porke, shred pyes of the best/ pig, veale, goose & capon, & Turkey wel drest” ― they weren’t available to most people.

As the BBC states, the food became a festive hit almost immediately among the English nobility because it was an exotic status symbol (like peacocks) and also because they reached full size in winter.

King Henry VIII might have eaten one for his Crimbo dinner, they add. 

Still, though the food was aspirational and often associated with an upper-class Christmas, it would take centuries for the food to become a must-have meat. 

What cemented the turkey Christmas dinner?

Dickens’ reference to the poultry in A Christmas Carol didn’t hurt (when his own festive bird went missing, his tour manager got an urgent letter reading “WHERE IS THAT TURKEY? IT HAS NOT ARRIVED!!!!!!!!!!!”).

And the Museum of English Rural Life added: “It was in 1851 that turkey first took centre stage at the royals’ dinner table, which began a trend we still enjoy today.” 

Still, the BBC says it took until the ’20s, when mechanised farming and different breeding and feeding techniques were introduced, that most of us were able to afford a Christmas turkey.