Christmas 'lunch'

In our house Christmas dinner is served at 3.15pm, immediately after the Queen's speech. After the main course we go back to thd living room to play party games for an hour or so before returning to thd table for puddings. The vegan, gluten free Xmas pudding I make contains a lot of money.

LOL VAMPIRE QUEEN. ....- it's nearly as bad as trying to explain the Rules of playing Cricket !!

And when you live in Wales the evening meal is Supper!

I am one who was brought up with breakfast, dinner, tea and then supper was a small snack before bed, like hot milk and a biscuit.

Now people call their evening meal supper, which I have always thought a bit pretentious. And ever since I have worked (and I started my first proper job down south) colleagues have referred to the midday meal as lunch. I felt all warm and tingly the other day when my daughter asked her little one "What shall we have for tea?" Folk here still tend to refer to the evening meal as tea, whereas my Mother saw tea, sandwiches and fancy cakes as tea, but she had spent her formative years in service.

I haven't really given the Christmas dinner quandry much thought before. Good question. We have Christmas dinner at about 3pm.

A few years ago when I was still living in Darlington before moving to New Zealand, we had a friend from London staying with us and also invited some Danish guests, temporarily living in Darlington, plus some of their visiting family for snacks and drinks on Christmas morning. Time went on and we were all enjoying ourselves so we rather lost track. By the time our Danish guests left we were far too full of the endless supply of nibbles – and the wine and beer we had drunk – even to contemplate a roast dinner. Consequently, we ate our Christmas dinner – roast goose – on Boxing Day evening. Does it really matter what you call it?

Three thoughts.

First, it's a class thing. Look at the difference between school dinner ladies and ladies who lunch.

Second, ignore the dying words of Henry King, who died of eating bits of string:-

"Breakfast, dinner, lunch and tea
Are the human frame requires..."

Third, I think of supper only in the context of The Last Supper, but that's not very Christmassy.

'First, it's a class thing.'

You're right grumppa, but it's regional too and I think there are people like me who have had a reasonable education but have no desire to conform to someone else's patterns. I tend to 'lunch' now though because that's what's most people call their midday meal. I know raucous ladies who lunch with very little decorum so class might not be such a factor any longer. I think that phrase is well known now so even I become a lady who 'lunches' every now and then.

I am going to start a 'Dames Who Dine' tradition I think, just to be awkward. It would confuse quite a few if the Dames who did Dinner came into a restaurant at lunch time!

I'm a northern peasant like patricageegee. Dinner at lunchtime, tea at tea-time. We don't have lunch. But in the last few years when I've mentioned getting the dinner ready I've had to clarify by saying that 'we're northerners. We have our dinner at lunchtime'. I invited a foreign friend for 'Sunday dinner' and she thought it would be in the evening, turned out she was busy at 'lunchtime' so we had to re-schedule the invitation.

We tend to say 'come for a meal at x o'clock' just to be clear!

Like I say living room to avoid the lounge/drawing room / sitting room dilemma and loo to avoid deciding between toilet, lavatory and several other words, some vulgar and some twee. Trying to be class neutral but probably failing.

Where I come from it was always breakfast, lunch, dinner and supper. Up north where I live now dinner is at lunchtime! which irritates me no end....each to their own...it will always be lunch to me.

When I was at school in London in the 60s (a girls' grammar school) it was always school "dinner" at midday.
On leaving school and working in a Central London office (only three miles from my school) it was definitely only ever "lunch" at midday.
Was that a class thing? Possibly.
When I first read this thread neither my husband or I could think what we actually call the Christmas meal. Lunch or dinner - it's always a delicious and happy family meal.

What you choose to call "dinner" (and all other meals) is still a real give away as to your social class origins.

I grew up having breakfast, dinner, tea and supper. We always have our main meal at "lunch time", therefore it is our dinner. Christmas dinner is usually at 1.00pm. This year it's a goose with all the usual accompaniments.

I meant too add that lunch to me is a light meal, as is supper (which I never eat these days).

Is the OP really about pedantry - it sounds like 'I know better than you do' snobbery to me. As I am not inviting you please don't worry yourself about what I call my meals.

All pedantry sounds to someone somewhere like "I know better than you", snobbery, especially to those who don't share that particular particularity.

Pedants know that, which is why they suffer in silence for a lot of the time. Meanwhile, they watch helplessly while spelling, grammar and subtlety of vocabulary go down the drain, and Mrs Malaprop is the nation's role model.

Lunch v dinner might have been a class thing in more southern regions, but i know many upper-class Yorkshire folk who always talked of breakfast, dinner and tea, just like we commoners. I also know a lot of people of all classes who have changed the terminology they use over the years, some because they thought it made them sound more posh!

Personally, although now I swap randomly between lunch and dinner for the midday meal, I just can't bring myself to say dinner for an evening meal. That means that if our Christmas dinner is going to be eaten after 4pm, we refer to it as the Christmas meal!

Do you live in a different country to me Elegran?

Like this Elegran?

To me, if it's got gravy on it, it is dinner, whatever the time of day. It doesn't worry me how others describe their meals. I think it is regional rather than class.

It may be a little of both rubysong. It appears that, by your measurement, I will go relatively dinnerless as I rarely have gravy.

One DGD never has gravy! and a friend complained to me that she went out for a 'Christmas lunch' at a rather posh hotel and they brought it out with gravy on it! and she was put right off.
(so it was Christmas dinner, not Christmas lunch and wasn't on Christmas Day anyway.)

Breakfast, dinner and tea here. Lunch was 'snack' in our house. Dinner was in the evening, unless it was a lighter kind of meal, then it was 'tea'.

DM used to say 'I do like a 'gravy dinner'' even though they always ate it at lunch-time.
Followed by tea at about 6 pm.

As a closet pedant I agree with you Elegran. I blame my wonderful English teacher.
*MawBroon I love that mug!