Is it lunch or dinner?

We have ours about 2pm but it lasts aged finishing about 5pm with the pudding as we stretch it out grazing and chatting. I think I say Christmas dinner.

It was at lunch time but called Christmas dinner when I was a child. I think I call it lunch now. We have it about one pm. It has to be finished in time for the Queen at 3pm. Oh……

Dinner.

Dinner. To me, dinner has always been the main meal of the day, no matter when you have it. And if a trad Christmas roast isn’t a main meal, I don’t know what is.

Having said that, for many years now we’ve had it at 5 or 6 - a much more relaxed day for the cook - and even when we had it at ‘lunchtime’ it’d be more like 3 o’clock.

Lunch - at 1.00pm

Dinner ….when I grew up posh people had lunch, school kids, manual workers etc had dinner middle of the day Still stays in my mind dinner is midday /1 o clock Lunch is what you do if you go out with friends for a light bite
And Christmas Dinner 1 o’clock washed up and sat down by 2 in the old days when we all went to Nans for Christmas dinner we d be cleared up and all put away well before the Queens speech (which I avoided by grabbing a book or game😂)

We just refer to it as the Christmas meal. Sort of starts somewhere between 2 & 3 and just seems to continue indefinitely. People eventually drift off back around the tree and continue to graze at will. Lovely.

At school the midday meal was called dinner, and lunch was a snack at mid-morning break - but if you brought a packed midday meal it was called cold lunch. Confusing.

Dinner but then we eat it at 6pm.

Lunch is at midday or thereabouts, dinner is in the evenings for us.

Same at Christmas.

Dinner is in the evening, as it was for my Grandparents and Great Grandparents.

We have Christmas Linch at 3.30pm, this year there will be 20 of us, no doubt the adults will still be round the table gone 6 o’clock with the children off to the playroom with new toys and games.

Grandma you’re right I’d forgotten about School dinners or a packed lunch!

Dinner. If I’m hosting I aim for 2pm.

Dinner, I think.
I eat mine whenever I fancy it.

Growing up it was usually 2pm Christmas dinner there was a lot of us so it was a rigid time. If we have family around it’s usually about 2pm to account for travelling etc. If we are on our own we have our starter at about 4pm then our roast and dessert when we feel like.

Linner - a mid-day substantial meal
(A word that my friend coined; I’m not crazy about how it sounds)

MissAdventure

Dinner, I think.
I eat mine whenever I fancy it.

Same here.

The joys of being alone.

Being a northerner, I was brought up calling any midday meal ( roughly between 11am - 3pm?) 'dinner', even if it was just a sandwich, so our Christmas Dinner was no different.

That said, I've been wracking my brains trying to remember if we still called it that if it was served later instead. I don't think we did - I think it was just 'the Christmas meal'.
Certainly not Christmas tea, anyway - that was always the late afternoon/early evening cold, buffet-type meal served hours after the dinner.

Slightly off- topic now, but did anyone else hear a weather forecaster this last week refer to "bonfire evening"?
I've never heard it called that before in my life - it's always been bonfire night. It sounded most odd!

Christmas dinner although for the rest. of the year, dinner is in the evening and lunch is at, erm, lunchtime. I went to a posh private prep school where ‘lunch’ was a snack taken during the mid morning break and dinner was at lunch time although when I got home, after tea, we had dinner; which takes me on to schools. (Sorry to go off at a tangent!) In Scotland a Public school is a state school. South of the border it’s a private school. No wonder visitors to the UK are confused. I’m confused 🤷‍♀️

Northerner here too and the middle of the day meal was always dinner, as in school dinners, and the meal you had at home later was your tea.

This is still how it is where DDs1&3 live in northern parts of England but here in Scotland it seems to be lunch and dinner.

Having lived up and down the length of Great Britain at various times, I just go with the flow.

Christmas time, it's Christmas dinner , in our house that's around the middle of the afternoon. Usually our main meal is eaten in the evening and that is dinner. Lunch is something light eaten midday, or in my case well into the afternoon.

Dinners eaten in the middle of the day is something I associate with school days, everyone called them school dinners. Other than that dinner for me is an evening meal. For example, if going out in the evening for a meal it's "going out to dinner" or middle of the day "going out to lunch" although that sometimes can constitute the main meal of the day. Semantics!

For me dinner and Lunch are interchangeable I don't care what anyone calls it as long as we eat it. We aim for somewhere between 2 and 3 and refuse to stress about it.

On Christmas day we call the hot meal 'Christmas Dinner', usually served around 1 whoever is hosting.
A cold buffet in the evening is 'tea'.
But that is just tradition, not really fussed what it's called as long as no-one is late!