Is "having my tea" a northern thing?

[Queenoftheblitz]

I'm a working class southerner. The only tea I have is in a cup with milk and sugar.
On mn a lot of posts talk about their evening meal as"tea", "what shall i make for tea" etc.
Do any southeners call it tea?

Exactly banana

That's all there is to it.

Dinner is the main cooked meal of the day, whether you eat it at lunch time or dinner time

If you have your main meal at lunch time you have your dinner at lunch time and a sandwich/ salad/ bowl of soup for tea. If you have a light lunch and a cooked dinner in the evening then you have lunch and dinner.

Lunch menus in restaurants are lighter and cheaper than dinner menus.

Packed lunches are eaten at lunch time. Cooked dinner is eaten at lunch time.

Nobody says "packed dinner".

Internally consistent.

Dinner and tea. From Scunthorpe.

Brought up in Wales but have been about 25 years in yorkshire. In Wales it was dinner and tea whereas in my bit of yorkshire it’s lunch and tea. So the transition wasn’t too difficult!

I'm a southerner and grew up in Buckinghamshire but we called our evening meal 'Tea'. Thinking about it though my Mum is Scottish so that might be why!

Lunch was always 'lunch' though and 'dinner' and 'tea' were used interchangeably.

Originally from Norfolk and I’ve always called it lunch and dinner. Though many of my friends said lunch and tea.

What cat said.

Dinner is the main meal of the day. Lunch or tea are the secondary meals- lunch and dinner, or dinner and tea.

You can of course have lunch and tea in the same day should you choose not to have a proper dinner...

Simple :)

I’m a northerner living down south and I eat dinner and tea. My very southernised aunty who lives in a very affluent part sometimes invites me for supper. The first time I was invited I was expecting an evening slice of toast or a bowl of shreddies 😂

Christmas is the exception though. It's always Christmas Dinner regardless of the time it's eaten. Never Christmas Lunch! Does anyone call it Christmas Lunch?

Nope Xmas dinner because it's the main meal of the day

And dinner is the main meal of the day regardless of whether it's the middle of the day or the evening

Unless you're really greedy and have a cooked evening meal that's bigger than your Xmas dinner!

If you have Xmas dinner then leftovers at 6pm that's dinner and tea

If you have Xmas dinner then leftovers at 9pm that's dinner and supper

Clear?

Evening meal at kids’ time (5 or 5.30) is tea. Grown up evening meal (about 7pm) is dinner.

Alpha - if you read the thread, we've discussed that a couple of days ago.

That's you told alpha

Isn't it just! Sorry I don't have time to read a few hundred posts, too busy making tea

I’m in Lancashire and have always said Dinner and tea here. I don’t refer to Christmas dinner or Christmas lunch, or a Sunday lunch for example, If we are having people round I just tend to say we’ll be eating at 4 ish (or whatever time).
If on the extremely rare occasions we go out for an evening meal, I still say I’m going out for tea, or going out for a meal, which I know some people on here hate, for some reason!

Alpha

Indeed, I too am making tea, here....... cooking it and everything

Dinner is the main meal of the day. Lunch or tea are the secondary meals- lunch and dinner, or dinner and tea
Yes, that's how we used it growing up in South London too

I grew up in Cambridgeshire and it was always tea.

Lunch and tea for us though most round here say dinner and tea. I'm in West Yorkshire.

Dinner and Tea in South West England too.

My DSis and myself were both born and bred in the same place (Somerset) . We would be eating the same evening meal but she called it tea, and I referred to it as dinner. And midday while she was eating her dinner, I would be eating the same meal , but call it lunch. I occasionally have 'afternoon' tea, this would be a drink and a slice of cake/ scone etc. However I would sometimes ask my DD if she had her dinner money to buy herself some lunch...go figure!

I'm from SE London and have been known to have tea instead of dinner. I probably most often say 'what's for dinner' but I might say 'what's for tea' too.

Def a class issue rather than regional. My posh Yorkshire cousins say lunch and supper, as do we in London. But our cleaning lady growing up called it dinner and tea, despite being very southern.

I call them "lunch" and "dinner" respectively and I live in Scotland - my neighbour is from the north of England and calls them "dinner" and "tea". I must admit hearing the evening meal called "tea" sets my teeth on edge, although quite why I really have no idea.

Does anyone call it Christmas Lunch?

It’s Christmas lunch here if you have it in the day (majority of people), and Christmas dinner if you have it at night. Australia. We’re nothing if not consistent.

I’d call it Christmas lunch if we were having it at lunch time. We tend to have it at dinner time (in the evening!) though, so call it Christmas dinner.
My IL’s eat at 1ish on Christmas Day and they call it Christmas lunch.

Brought up on dinner and tea but I do now call them lunch and tea. But when I go to a restaurant in the evening it’s dinner! My son calls midday meal lunch but still refers to the school “dinner queue” —when he’s regaling me with stories about who pushed in/got pushed out and got a detention—

Definitely not a north south thing. More a class thing in the past, however, when my son was a baby I was amazed that it seemed almost trendy to call it 'tea'

Southerner here - it's lunch and dinner, unless it's a cold dinner then it's called tea!

So if my toddler has his main hot meal at lunchtime then he has a cold tea in the evening- sandwich etc.

Maybe the dinner ladies were called that as they served a hot lunch, so it was the dinner of the day ?! Makes sense to me