CHristmas lunch!

If our daughter comes for Sunday dinner, which she regularly does, I always ask if she wants us to have dinner at lunch or dinnertime!

I have breakfast, lunch and dinner, my help has lunch and tea is the main meal.

Breakfast, lunch, dinner. BUT: Christmas dinner is only meal (other than light breakfast) of the day, it starts at around 3 ish and ends when the last person gets up from the table. Have been known to sit their for hours, clearing plates/bringing coffee and cheese.....talking, playing cards. Have never eaten Christmas Day tea in my life. I know some people, early days of marriage, who had to eat Christmas lunch at one set of parents' house and then go to the other set of parents for tea. They obviously dont serve as big Christmas dinner as I do

When DDs come home I too ask if they want dinner at lunch or dinner time on Sun (it depends how early they are going home).Apart from a light breakfast (Bucks Fizz and chocolate croissants) I can't imagine eating two meals on Christmas day. I always feel we ought to eat turkey sandwiches and Christmas cake about 9pm but no one ever wants any .

Coming from a working class family (by the way, why do we still say working class, or blue collar ? ...surely everyone who works is working class or they would be people of leisure !?) we always had dinner at 1.10pm ...it was my job to sit on the door step and listen for the 'bull' from my dad's engineering works,,,then running inside to tell my mum dad was on his way home so she knew to put the dinner on the plate to keep warm in the oven ...he then came home at 600pm for tea and sometime we would have 'cheese underneath' for supper (cheese on a slice of bread out into a cleared space in the ashes under the fire !) .... Christmas day 'dinner' was at 3,00pm ......I still refer to it as Christmas dinner ...there are only two of us at home so we have it at whatever time suits us .....sometimes 2.pm sometimes 6.00pm ...there is no set rule !

Otherwise, I now do lunch every day ...since working and sitting at my desk for my 30 minute lunch break in the NHS !

I am another who was brought up with breakfast, dinner,tea, supper. Lunch wasn't part of a Midlander's vocabulary back then! The men took their 'snap' to work, often wrapped in the paper from a shop bought loaf.

I still find it strange when I am invited to 'supper' with a certain friend, one brought up in Surrey. Supper will always be the snack you have just before bed. The other day she asked her husband what he fancied for supper. He replied "Milk and biscuits will do", much to her annoyance. Like me, he's from the Midlands.

Yes, everyone coming to us on Christmas day is expecting dinner, even though it will be served at 2pm.

DaphneBroon you made me laugh excusing the trump word ?

Supper time for us is much later on, before bed if u r still feeling a bit peckish. Evening dinner is usually between 6 and 7.30ish after you get home from work.

When I was a child we had breakfast, dinner, tea and supper Super was biscuits and a cup of hot milk. Sometimes we had High Tea usually on Sunday which was usually cold meat, salad and cake or fruit salad. When I was doing Domestic Science at school the teacher asked us what we called the main meal of the day. The more well off girls all called it lunch. I do call the main meal of the day lunch now but I still call the evening meal tea. Dinner to me is a cooked meal with a knife and fork and pudding or is it dessert?

I've never heard the expression "Christmas dinner". I don't think I could manage dinner on Christmas day - I'd be too full up from lunch!

Another vote for Witzend from me! Main meal is Dinner in my book whether you eat it in the middle of the day or in the evening. A light meal or sandwich would be lunch or tea.

Pudding Falconbird definitely pudding!

Our Christmas dinner (never lunch) is usually served in mid afternoon.

Same here anno, always wait until it is dark- so we can have candles around ...

Joyeux Noël to you and yours

I always have breakfast, lunch and dinner. As a child we called an evening snack, such as milk and biscuit, supper. However, the main Christmas meal is Christmas dinner. When my mother was alive Christmas dinner was at 1.30 and it moved to 2.30 to 3pm after she died in the 1980s. Nowadays it is 5 or 6 pm and we have a light snack (I suppose it's brunch) around midday when opening presents, instead of a starter.

It's definately a north south divide. My inlaws live in Durham and call midday meal dinner I'm from Hertfordshire and have always called it lunch, there evening meal is tea, ours is dinner.So they have breakfast, dinner tea, we have breakfast lunch dinner. But we do have Christmas meal at 2oc and call it dinner, only one day a year tho. ??

We (we're Yorkshire through and through) have our dinner at lunchtime and tea at tea-time (around 5pm). For us, afternoon tea would be a pot of tea, sandwiches and cake between 3-4pm but all we have at 3pm is a cuppa. But sometimes when I refer to our dinner I have to elaborate for clarity and say we have our dinner at lunchtime. A few years ago I invited an Italian friend, recently arrived in England, to 'Sunday dinner'. We came out of church together, I'd set the table at home and the meat etc was in the oven - but she had thought I meant the evening and she was not actually free at lunchtime. We had to postpone for a week. I tried to explain about lunch, dinner, tea, afternoon, supper but it all got very complicated.

When we were kids we'd never heard of the word lunch. Dinner was at midday-ish and then we had tea in the evening. We still say Christmas dinner but sometimes we go out for lunch!

If there is gravy on it, it is dinner.

It is very complicated now we all move about the country and can lead to misunderstanding. I was brought up in the north and it was breakfast dinner (sin meal) and tea (high tea).

Main meal not sin meal!!!

Supper was a hot milky drink and maybe a biscuit before going to bed. Lunch was elevenses ie a snack we took to school for morning break. Tgen when w moved south i heard people referring to lunch as light midday meal and dinner in the evening so i assumed as others havesaid that dinner is the main meal and have adopted that terminology but often dlip and refer to tea. Toavoid confusion i ask people to come for a midday mesl or evening meal or give a time as it is so easy to make the sort of mistake grandmama has mentioned. Yes we have christmas dinner at around 2 pm and a light tea late evening if anyone can manage it! Christmas lunch just sounds daft!

How I remember those high teas Falconbird , boiled ham, fruit with evaporated milk and no cake until you had eaten your bread and butter.