Ghosts of dinners past

Ghosts of dinners past
By HELEN HARVEY - Taranaki Daily News
Last updated 14:06 21/12/2009


ROBERT CHARLES
Taranaki Research Centre information services officer Andrea Wallace with some of the early New Zealand Christmas cards in the centre's collection.

PUKE ARIKI COLLECTION
A Christmas card from colonial New Zealand.
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On Saturday night, December 24, 1887, New Plymouth was buzzing. The main street was full of people and the shops were busy as people did their last- minute Christmas shopping.

The day had been hot, so the cool night air was refreshing to the shoppers, who listened to a band playing while checking out the colourful displays in the shop windows.

The weekly newspaper the Budget reported that shopkeepers appeared to be doing a "fair business considering the dull times and shortness of money".

The butcher shops used to compete with each other to have the best display. The Taranaki Herald reported in 1884 that one butcher's shop window showed bullocks, sheep, lamb, calves, pigs, ducks, geese, turkeys and other fowl.

Grocers had seasonal fruits, little titbits, sweetmeats and tasty treats to attract customers.

And the shops stayed open as late as possible to ensure a good trade. In 1887, the band stopped playing at 10pm and the streets cleared at midnight, when the bell at the Catholic church "resounded through the town", the Budget reported.

Though the hotels were full, there was no drunkenness or breach of order or decorum, the paper said, "which is a credit to the town".

Christmas day dawned bright and clear. It was a Sunday, so the churches were full. The paper recalled the band played Christians Awake on the Barrack Hill (now Marsland Hill) in the morning. Back at home, houses may have been decorated with nikau palms, which were very popular for Christmas decorations in mid-1880s Taranaki.

There may have been a Christmas tree. Christmas trees were a German tradition that became popular in England in the 1840s, when pictures were seen of Queen Victoria, her German husband, Albert, and their children gathered around one.

The Tarrant family, who lived in Taihore, out the back of Strathmore on what's now the Forgotten World Highway, in the 1880s and '90s, had a little rimu sapling for a Christmas tree one year. In the book No One Went to Town, author Phyllis Johnson says it was decorated with buttons and beads.

Taranaki Research Centre team leader Gary Bastin says people had to use local materials and make do. This was true with the Christmas dinner. One popular meat dish was called colonial goose. It wasn't a goose at all - rather a flap of mutton with stuffing inside.
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You could still buy a colonial goose 20 years ago, but then it was a rolled seasoned shoulder of hogget, according to Murray Sattler, better known as Buzz the Butcher in Westown. Then, when farmers got better money for lamb, it became a rolled seasoned shoulder of lamb. But the term has gone out of use, a victim of consumer laws, since it isn't, actually, goose.

Christmas was more marked in the 1800s, Mr Bastin says. "[People] lived a more spartan existence, so the notion of having a social time and making a fuss over the meal would have been differentiated over time."

In 1887, the Budget's Christmas stories included one about a feast held by a chief named Henare Punuruka and his wife, Louisa, who lived in Peropero, to which Europeans were invited. The dinner consisted of "roast turkeys, geese, ducks, fowls, lamb, beef, pork, fish, new potatoes, green peas and cabbage". And that was just the first course. There was a Christmas cake and dessert included plum puddings, tarts, pies and jellies of various kinds.

As Christmas is the season of goodwill, spare a thought for the settlers in Christchurch in 1850, whose first Christmas dinner in their new country didn't quite turn out as planned.

A bullock, whose every joint had been ordered, did a runner. It was never found, Alison Clarke says in her book, Holiday Seasons: Christmas, New Year and Easter in Nineteenth Century New Zealand.

An abundance at Christmas was a sign of how well people were doing in the new land.

Agricultural labourer George Douch emigrated in 1875. He had struggled to make a living in his native Sussex, but two years after he arrived in Taranaki, he was building his own house on his own land, Dr Clarke says in her book.

He wrote to his parents saying he would never forget the white plum pudding (lacking fruit because the family was so poor) he'd had in 1855. In New Zealand, his Christmas dinner included new spuds, green peas, roast beef and "nine gallons of ale".

The new potatoes and green peas were a reflection of mixing old traditions with the realities of having Christmas in summer. And despite the weather, the settlers, like a lot of New Zealanders today, still had a hot meal. However, they also had summer desserts, especially strawberries, which they ate along with the traditional Christmas pudding.

In 1857, Taranaki resident Maria Atkinson made a 16-pound (7kg) pudding to feed the 18 people present for Christmas dinner.

"The groaning table also featured beef, turkey, ham, fowl, almonds, raisins, Christmas mincemeat and gooseberry pie".

Making a plum pudding involved family members, who took turns stirring the pudding, during which time they had to make a wish.

Mrs Beaton, a famous cook during the second part of the 19th century, has a recipe for a plain Christmas pudding in one of her cookbooks. The ingredients were flour, breadcrumbs, raisins, currants, suet, eggs, milk, peel, allspice and salt. The pudding was boiled for five hours. It was, according to Mrs Beaton, sufficient for nine or 10 children.

Taranaki Research Centre information services officer Andrea Wallace says when people first came to New Zealand, they would have had wonderful cookbooks. When Christmas rolled around, they would have looked up some recipes and found something they liked.

"Then you'd have looked at the ingredients you had and your lack of kitchen and thought, What can I do in a Dutch oven? Ingenuity reigned supreme and people made their colonial goose."

A Dutch oven is like a camp oven, a big pot with a thick lid that was covered in hot coal and ashes.

The ovens were used until the 1870s, when Henry Shacklock made the first coal range.

"Before then, no one really had coal ranges, because they weren't compatible with local coal."

Despite the difficulties, people were determined to enjoy their Christmas. Nearly 300 new settlers enroute to New Plymouth spent Christmas 1879 on board the Halcione. According to the ship's newsletter The Maraval Jackdaw all were determined to have a good Christmas. "May the smoking joint, the steaming glass and the ringing peal of laughter reign supreme," the newsletter said.

The first Kiwi Christmas was held just offshore in 1642. Dutch explorer Abel Tasman crossed the entrance of Cook Strait and anchored east of Stephens and D'Urville islands. There was what has since become a bit of a Christmas tradition in some parts of the country: bad weather.

NZHistory.net.nz says while sheltering from a storm, the Dutch enjoyed freshly killed pork from the ship's menagerie, washed down with extra rations of wine.

The next Christmas dinner in New Zealand wasn't until 1769, when Captain James Cook first arrived.

The crew of the Endeavour, while battling heavy seas, this time off the tip of the North Island, had a feast of goose pie. Only there was no goose available, so they improvised and botanist Joseph Banks shot a gannet instead. Apparently the Endeavour's crew spent Boxing Day nursing hangovers.

This has also become a bit of a Kiwi tradition. As has going to the races. Boxing Day race meetings were held all over New Zealand in the 1800s.

A lot of families also went on picnics on Boxing Day, something that wouldn't have happened in a European winter. But it was a good way to use up the leftovers and enjoy the summer.

For Hawera residents, catching the train to Normanby, having a picnic and then heading to the races was a popular way to spend Boxing Day.

But in New Plymouth on Boxing Day in 1887, it rained all day and the races were postponed and the picnics abandoned.

Not so traditional

Most of the Christmas traditions enjoyed today date from Queen Victoria's time. Before she came to the throne in 1837, there were no Christmas trees, cards, crackers, Santa Claus or a holiday off work. The wealth and technologies generated by the industrial revolution of the Victorian era changed the face of Christmas forever.

Mass production meant getting toys for Christmas was no longer only for the rich. And the wealth generated meant middle class families in England and Wales were able to take time off and celebrate over two days, Christmas Day and Boxing Day.

In New Zealand, a day off work for Christmas was the norm, but was not law until 1910. Shops and pubs often opened. Newspapers were published on Christmas Day, some of them even into the early 20th century. Christmas cards: The first Christmas card was designed in England in 1843 by John Horsley after Rowland Hill introduced the penny post in 1840. Before 1840, it would not have been feasible for ordinary people to send cards because of the cost of postage. By the 1860s, Christmas cards were very popular in England. Christmas cake: Originally, Christmas cake was eaten on Twelfth Night (January 6). In the late 19th century, people began to eat the traditional Twelfth Night cake at Christmas. Christmas crackers: Crackers were invented in London by Tom Smith in 1846. The original idea was to wrap his lollies in a twist of fancy coloured paper, but this developed and sold much better when he added notes, paper hats, small toys and made them go bang. Boxing Day: December 26th earned its name as the day servants and working people opened the boxes in which they had collected gifts of money from the "rich folk". Christmas stockings: These first became popular around 1870. Traditionally, an orange went in the toe. Christmas carols: A number of popular Christmas carols were written in the 19th century, including O Come All Ye Faithful in 1843, Once in Royal David's City in 1848, O Little Town of Bethlehem in 1868 and Away in a Manger in 1883.