It may still be months off for most, but if you’re a butcher, chef or caterer it’s likely you’re gearing up for Christmas right now – with widespread supply chain issues, you don’t want to leave anything to the last minute and be left short.
While it might be the most wonderful time of the year, it’s also the busiest, and a large amount of planning is key to ensuring you have everything you need come the festive season to satisfy demand.
Above most other things, that includes a healthy stock of ham. More than 74 per cent of Australians, and indeed a similar proportion of New Zealanders, celebrate the day with a big lunch or dinner – traditionally with a glazed ham as the centrepiece of a sprawling spread.
Indeed, 55 per cent of Aussies identified the ham as their favourite festive food, while the average time spent preparing a Christmas meal is an amazing 27 hours. Rest assured though, this obsession with dishing out huge servings of grub at the end of the year is no modern phenomenon.
In fact, it’s likely we owe the ancient pagan populations of northern Europe a word of thanks for starting the celebrations: it was they who first enjoyed a significant feast around the time of the midwinter solstice, gorging on beef, berries, beer and the precursor of the Christmas ham – spit-roasted pork.
The Romans celebrated their own midwinter festival, that of Saturnalia, and during the Middle Ages these earlier celebrations were allied to the proposed birthday of Jesus, on December 25. From those beginnings emerged traditions of culinary indulgence, even among those more well known for their abstinence, such as monks and nuns.
Christmas dinner increasingly began to resemble the meal we enjoy today, with additions such as roast turkey and mince pies, while pork and ham remained a mainstay. And when the first Europeans pitched up in Australia in the 18th century, they brought with them these same traditions; 18 turkeys even arrived with the First Fleet in January 1788.
The antipodean Christmas dinner has been evolving ever since, better serving the sweltering time of the year and more closely reflecting the diversity of modern populations, while clinging onto certain traditions. And so, while you’ll find anything from a plate of prawns to a panettone at a Yuletide spread these days, the centrepiece is still likely to be a high-quality, well-prepared ham – harking all the way back to those ancient beginnings.
