Christmas dinner police

As the Grim Reaper has been working overtime in my family recently its only 3 adults and one child for Chritmas dinner/lunch. This year irs going to be a Jo-bery Carvery (play on my name) of help yourself dishes set out on the kitchen side comprising turkey thigh as none of us like breast meat, gammon and beef, yorkies, bread and cranberry sauces, gravy, pigs in blankets and M&S pigs in yorkie blankets, parsnips, carrots, sprouts, chestnuts, roasties and cauliflower cheese. We can have as much or as little as we like in any combination we like.

Two words - Yorkshire pudding!

I'm vegetarian... never bought a turkey (or any meat substitute in its place either).

Bread sauce is definitely a British thing, my Welsh mum used to make it every year. It sounds disgusting and would probably work as wallpaper paste but I have to confess that I quite like it.

Goodness, that reminds me of the year when for various reasons , some related to alcohol, some to selective martyrdom, we sat down to our Christmas meal at 10.00 pm.

(A lot of satsumas, chocolate oranges, peanuts and boxes of after eights were eaten that year to stave off hunger pangs)

The people you are talking about in real life do sound annoying, but imo most people posting on MN about this are comparing opinions and traditions, and personally I don't think most of them are seriously trying to tell other people what to eat. Most of those who appear to be 'policing' on here are doing it with a dash of humour/tongue-in-cheekness imo.

I voted YABU because I don't see many Christmas Dinner police - but over the years I have had both turkey and beef roast dinners, I've had ham, egg & chips, I've had steak, we did lasagne one year when we didn't have a functional kitchen, this year I'm going out for a curry on Christmas Day and cooking Christmas Dinner for 12 on Boxing Day... No one polices or judges though.

😂

I have never had this liquid bread 🤣

Is it an English thing? It sounds…like wallpaper paste.

It's noticeable in primary schools that the hot midday meal provided by the school kitchen is referred to as school dinner, while a midday meal brought in by the children is called a packed lunch. Both meals are consumed at the same time yet one is a dinner and the other a lunch. This suggests to me that the content of the meal is at least as important as the time of day as to whether it's lunch or dinner. Dinner implies a hot meal while lunch can be as basic as a sandwich and a bag of crisps. No child has ever brought in a packed dinner!

In conclusion, Christmas dinner is definitely a dinner, irrespective of the time at which it is consumed.

Johnny-come-lately? Did Farage spout that at you? Flag shagging propaganda, sorry. The Tudors started the Christmas turkey, Henry VIII loved it more than his wives and Queen Victoria was well up for a gobble at Christmas.

Turkey is grim
Mashed potatoes do not belong on a Christmas dinner
Bread sauce is vile
Always Yorkshire puddings
Ketchup on any roast dinner is a prison-worthy offence

I will throw my hat in the ring for the lunch/dinner debate. The meal dictates the moniker rather than the timing. Ie a hot meal at midday or in the afternoon/ evening is a dinner, but a cold sandwich midday is lunch or a light bite in the afternoon is a tea. ‘Christmas Supper’ should absolutely be mocked at all opportunities though.

I'm northern - Lancashire born and bred. We've always done breakfast, lunch, dinner. And our Christmas dinner was always in the evening.

Yorkies are definitely acceptable on a Christmas roast. I shall be doing those with a nice, crunchy suet pudding too. Yorkies are integral to any roast.

I am, however, cheating by using aunt bessies large yorkies as they were on offer and I figured they are a potential spanner in the works.

I’m sure a good many of us used to have school dinners.

TBH people who call it ‘Christmas lunch’ remind me of those people who say ‘Between you and I…’ mistakenly thinking it’s correct.

Little sausages wrapped in a little bit of bacon. 👍

@SDTGisAnEvilWolefGenius "We have goose - far more traditional than Johnny-Come-Lately turkey! 😉” - you’ve reminded me that the first Christmas after my father died, to ring the changes, our family started a tradition new for us, of roast goose, which I carried on as much as possible later with my own family, whenever I could find goose to cook. (My father would have loved goose rather than turkey, I suspect the reason we didn’t have it when he was alive was my very traditional grandparents and my mother carrying her own family’s traditions.) Trouble is, a large goose will just about stretch to six people with small appetites and we don’t have enough oven space to get two geese for a minimum of ten people! Hmm, that’s got me thinking, I might see if I can get a goose for New Year’s Eve.

Hang on...before I get any further.than your second sentence are you saying that your mother is a cross dressing police officer? I've been here years and can't be deciphering new abbreviations.

😁

Tradition for traditions sake is bonkers. Have what you want for Christmas dinner.

https://m.youtube.com/shorts/CzBrHLjLkdE

We have goose - far more traditional than Johnny-Come-Lately turkey! 😉

We don’t have yorkshires - my mum was adamant they only went with beef - but they are so delicious, I think they shouldn’t be restricted to one meat. I don’t do them for Christmas mainly because of oven space, and because I can’t make good ones.

I do somewhat miss turkey - it was what I had right up until I met dh, but he doesn’t like it, so we tried other options and settled on goose, which is delicious, so I don’t miss the turkey on Christmas Day, but I do miss all the lovely, left-over turkey meals.

My mum was the dinner police - she didn’t restrict herself just to Christmas - she never allowed gravy - we had bread sauce with chicken or turkey, apple sauce with pork, parsley sauce with gammon and horseradish or mustard with beef. And tomato ketchup was only allowed on a few meals. Suggestions of gravy or ketchup any other time were dismissed with the statement that she didn’t spend time cooking so we could drown the food and not be able to taste it.

Even though she died 2 years ago, I can still feel her disapproving gaze when I transgress any of her rules - but I don’t let it stop me!

Aren't your rules just another variation of policing?

YANBU.
Mentioned to a group of people no one around ours likes roast potatoes, not even at Christmas, and you’d have thought I’d said we like to kick children as they run past. I think of the UK as having a very freeing, open-minded food culture (compared to Italy, Greece for example) but the amount of people who insist Christmas dinner isn’t one if it doesn’t have turkey (wasn’t it meant to be goose, anyway?) is funny!