Talk:Christmas ham

Saturn

Wouldn't the Christmas ham be an ancient Roman tradition in honor of god Saturn, later adopted elsewhere too but forgotten in most parts? Petteri Punakuono 03:51, 10 December 2006 (UTC)

Recipe

The recipe should bot be here, but rather in the Wikicookbook. Recipes do not belong in Wikipedia. Israelite9191 05:37, 14 December 2006 (UTC)

Stonehenge

I only found this from the net, it has been verified by archealogical findings of pig bones from the sites of worship that Tammuz was celebrated by eating pig - as has been verified by archealogical findings that the ancient builders of Stonehenge ate boar - do not have the magazine or English historical books available: However, Tammuz and the religious sacrifices is common knowledge which even I with my bad memory remember from school history lessons. From an April 14, 2003 article by Lowell Ponte in FrontPageMagazine.com:

“…In the religious mythology of ancient Mesopotamia are found Tammuz, lover of the goddess of love and sex Ishtar (one of several related names of Euro-Mediterranean pagan goddesses – Astarte, Ashtoreth, Isis, Eostre – who may be the namesake for Easter). Tammuz at age 40 was killed by a wild boar, but as a deity of vegetation he is restored to life each springtime. At this time of year in the ancient Middle East, women would weep for 40 days over the death of Tammuz, a pagan practice that the Prophet Ezekiel warned (Ezekiel 8:14-15) was happening next to God’s temple in Jerusalem. The lover of Tammuz, Ishtar (daughter of the Moon god Sin) had arrived on Earth inside a giant moon egg that spashed down in the Euphrates River in Mesopotamia. (Thus it was taught in the Ishtar cult mythology of the ancient Queen Semiramis.) Ishtar was accompanied by a hare (mistakenly called a rabbit) that had been a bird before she magically transformed it into a symbol of fertility and fecundity, a proto-Playboy Bunny. This magical bunny retained its birdlike ability to lay eggs. And so it was that in the ancient pagan Middle East, springtime was celebrated by people giving one another brightly-colored eggs. They made baskets of river reeds to carry these eggs and spring lilies. Women wore new hats shaped like what we call bonnets. They ate hotbreads stamped with the X-symbol of Ishtar (Jeremiah 44:17). Bunnies were a symbol of Ishtar, whose worship took the form of ritual prostitution. Those not under Jewish Kosher laws ate ham to end the weeping 40 day “Month of Tammuz,” thereby symbolically devouring the beast that killed Tammuz. And on that celebratory morning early in the fourth month of the year, men and women would look to the east and celebrate the rising of the Sun God, another pagan act beside the Temple condemned by Ezekiel (Ezekiel 8:16). You might notice some parallels here – to Easter eggs and their roll on the White House lawn, to Easter ham, to Easter lilies and baskets and bonnets and bunnies. Lent, like the weeping for Tammuz, lasts 40 days leading up to this celebration of resurrection. Many churches in a few days will be holding “Easter sunrise services,” even though Christian scripture says nothing about sunrise as the women go to Jesus’ tomb. Celebrating the sunrise in this way is not Christian; it is from ancient pagan Mesopotamia.”

So, Lazarus Sunday replaced Tammuz’s rite of spring and Lent was reinvented from its original cultural identity as a women’s lament for the loss of Ishtar’s potent lover; eating a cured ham was a ritualized form of revenge against the species that devoured poor Tammuz; the Easter bunny was an icon of a metamorphosis from an ancient egg-laying (pre-historic?) bird…apparently, “easter bonnets” were worn in Mesopotamia but I’m going to have to do some more research to find out about the ritualized prostitution…that’s one activity which doean’t seem to have survived the pagan-to-Christian transition, although one suspects the puritans hated Easter’s ‘wantonness’ & attavistic pagan connotations. —Preceding unsigned comment added by IndianaJonesy (talk • contribs) 11:15, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Found some info about the pigs and stonehenge from the net:

http://www.shef.ac.uk/mediacentre/2005/406.html Analysis of pig bones found at Durrington Walls, a ceremonial site of wooden post circles near to Stonehenge, shows that the pigs were most likely to have been slaughtered in winter. This suggests that our ancestors were taking part in a festival, feast or ceremony around the time of the winter solstice. By looking at ancient pigs' teeth found at the site, researchers discovered that most of the pigs were less than a year old when they were slaughtered.

Dr Umberto Albarella, a bone expert in the University of Sheffield's Department of Archaeology, explains: "Pigs in the Neolithic tended to be born in spring, which would mean, if killed as part of a feast or ceremony at eight to ten months old, they would have died in December or January - at around the time of the winter solstice.

- Apparently the normans only took up the local custom of eating pig during winter solstice? Also http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/7078578.stm http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article2201086.ece By any standards, it was a wild party: piles of half-eaten pig bones were flung to the floor by revellers who then smashed their food bowls into a "filthy" mud floor.

Add to that the fact that this bash took place 4,600 years ago, less than two miles from Stonehenge, and the result is a dramatic step forward in the quest to trace the origins - and purpose - of the world's most famous standing stones.

Archaeologists have revealed the discovery of a huge ancient settlement in Wiltshire used by the builders of Stonehenge and their descendants to celebrate life and death with lavish feasts of freshly slaughtered livestock. .. "The dating of the pigs' teeth suggests they were killed at nine months in time for the midwinter solstice. It would have been a sort of Neolithic Christmas - they had a really good party." —Preceding unsigned comment added by IndianaJonesy (talk • contribs) 11:32, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Hello there. Please keep in mind that this information is about a specific custom in Scandinavia and in England by way of Scandinavia. I don't think it's problematic to state that your source above states that pig bones were consumed at stone henge and it's theorized that pigs were consumed on the winter solstice. However, this ham we're talking about is a specific cultural custom seemingly brought to England by the Anglo-Saxons. Obviously, pig consumption in Northern Europe did not originate amongst the Germanic tribes. :bloodofox: (talk) 12:16, 22 December 2007 (UTC)

Freyr

Hello bloodofox, I can see you have asked others to find booknotes (from your earlier edits) to support the claim that eating Christmas ham is a custom that originated from the devotees of Freyr. Also I can see from your edits that you kinda seems to like Freyr. Maybe the god is a matter of somewhat national pride to you, I do not know. If so, it is however very probable that you do not share many genes to people of that time, it is only custom and those before you who have eaten Christmas ham that drive your interest in the matter, I am guessing (and only guessing) here. When did people start to eat Christmas in Sweden (and I am only guessing you are Swedish, from the article about Freyr which names Freyr to be a 'Swedish' god. Did people already eat ham when the country of Sweden became to be? Earlier than that? Later?)

But the custom was NOT speficic to anglo-saxons but originated before them as well as before the time of Jesus. Now that you have noticed this, why keep the article such as it is? Seemingly only Swedes and Australians still follow the custom, but it's origins lie elsewhere and therefore it should be said int he article that "Swedes consider the custom to started with..", "the Australians consider the custom.."

Where is the evidence that pig was eaten during winter solstice by the Freyr supporters? Any such available? Did they not eat pig during many other occasions as well? And if so, would it not be incorrect to call the custom of eating Christmas ham to have originated with them? Stonehenge, on the other hand, was prerry much BUILT in order to celebrate the solstice, that was the most important feast of the year for them. The advanced culture of the time was knowledgeable of the calendar etc.

If you have the time to find booknotes - earliest known pig eaters _during Christmas_ in England were the builders of Stonehenge. In Europe, see above about Tammuz. Those are only the known ones.

Alas this whole page seems to be a joke, a joke that people from other cultures or children from any cannot understand: It says Christmas ham - but in reality is about a violent god that nationalists of one country like to support. The devotees of Freyr, an insignificant god of not many supporters, do not care about history.

Ham explained: What is a Christmas ham? The ham eaten duting Christmas. Once popular througout Europe but nowadays replaced by other Christmas dishes, which are considered to be better tasting by the people in most countries as habits have evolved since the middle ages.

Freyr explained

The devotees of Freyr claim origins of Christmas ham to have started at a specific time and place, both wrong. Why so? The nationalists, after nationstates emerged wanted to explain the international customs be somewhat local in order to gain support for their nationalist causes and thus they made up stories of how a specific custom would be local in origin. (Used to be so that people could wander around, no passports, no borders.) The modern-day counterparts of such nationalists, despite themselves knowing better than what they claim, now wish to do the same on an international scale: to explain that ham eating on Christmas came from a place that was only, most probably, populated a very long time after people already hams during the winter solstice. Some supported one god, some another, yet others none.

Alas I am too busy with my work to look into the matter further, so have to stop now. --IndianaJonesy (talk) 17:03, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

Hell Indiana. Most of my edits are on articles relating to Germanic paganism, this is true. It seems to me you have a poor understanding of this subject matter and I would recommend that you read into the subject more. For example, while Freyr - the name which basically means "lord" - is associated with the royal line in Sweden, most of our information regarding the figure is from Iceland and it would appear that he was known under different names to the various Germanic peoples.

I would recommend that you familiarize yourself with the Anglo-Saxons, a Germanic tribe that formed England. They originated in southern Jutland and it is due to this foundation that we are speaking English, a Germanic language, now. We have retained numerous traditions from this period, such as Anglo-Saxon law and the English language. Later, the Norsemen repeatedly invaded and conquered areas of what we now know as the United Kingdom, bringing with them many aspects of their customs, traditions and language as well. The Normans, also of Scandinavian origin though Latinized, then conquered England. During all of this, it would seem logical that the Yule log and Christmas ham survived as the tradition would likely continue to be re-inforced.

The whole section is sourced. On Wikipedia, information requires solid sources. :bloodofox: (talk) 18:05, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

From pagan times?

I'm not inclined to believe the claims this article makes about Christmas ham being a pagan leftover. First of all: pork has been an important source of meat for a long time in Scandinavia. While it is possible that there is an unbroken tradition to feast on pork around Christmas, this does not mean that the Christmas ham can not be a later introduction.

As it is, this claim is supported by three sources: one is a folklorist from the beginning of the last century, while the other two does not appear to deal with the Christmas ham at all, but rather the boar's head (which is interesting when considering the sv:julhös, but is about as far from the ham you can get on the pig). None of these are written by food historians.

I can say that at least Marja Hartola, in Magnus Gröntoft (ed), Biskop Brasks måltider notes that "lutfish is the only dish that has been served at Christmas for over 500 years in Scandinavia, and one of very few tradional dishes left from Medieval times". This contradicts the claims made here.

Andejons (talk) 19:09, 3 November 2017 (UTC)

Completely agree. Connecting the eating of boar's head to the Christmas ham is pure WP:SYNTH. The cited article does not mention ham even once. Ham is, after all, a cured product typically made from domestic pig. Boar is a wild animal, and its meat is not usually cured. I have removed the material about pagan connections and boar's head because there is not a scintilla of evidence in the cited sources that connects Christmas ham to them. --Macrakis (talk) 18:18, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Agree. I just noticed that (substantially) the same material as you removed is also found at Boar's Head Carol. I have removed it. William Avery (talk) 17:16, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Australia and December solstice

Isn't the Christmas actually in the middle of the Australian summer rather than beginning of the summer? For example in the Northern hemisphere the midsummer is spent around the June solstice. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Mikko.nummelin (talk • contribs) 23:19, 25 December 2020 (UTC)

Pope Sixtus III claim

The article read:

Pope Sixtus III insisted in 435 that Christians should eat pork on Christmas to make a difference to the Jews, for which pork is forbidden.

The source is a newspaper article about using leftover ham, a very weak source for such a strong claim. I have tried to find corroboration for this claim elsewhere, and haven't succeeded. In fact, there was a pork dole from over a century before Sixtus, before Christianity became official. I have removed this claim. Of course, if someone founds a solid source, it should go back in. --Macrakis (talk) 20:41, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Viking claim

@Bloodofox: removed the refutation of the claim that Christmas Ham comes from a German pagan ritual, calling it Synth. There is one footnote for this claim, which is about the Germanic pagan practice of sacrificing a boar. It would be Synth to take that as evidence of a connection to modern practice. Bloodofox also removed a footnote to a well-sourced article (which I wrote, as it happens) which shows that Christmas Ham was invented as a new tradition in the early 20th century by American meat-packers. I have restored the content. --Macrakis (talk) 21:04, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Any additions need to abide by WP:RS. See WP:PROVEIT. As a side note, the yule boar or Christmas ham tradition far predates the founding of the US. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:46, 31 December 2023 (UTC)

Bloodofox, I agree completely that we should be using only RS. I also agree that we need to clarify which parts of the article apply to the US and which apply to other parts of the world.

I am glad we agree that the story about Sixtus III was poorly sourced. (see above) If someone finds a solid source for this, we can restore it.

For some reason, you have removed the RS supporting the American traditions section, namely my article "How Old is American Christmas Ham?", which appeared in Repast (Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor) 37:1:6 (Winter 2021). Repast is the official publication of the Culinary Historians of Ann Arbor, and if you take a look at the article, I think you'll find that it is in turn is well-sourced. I have restored the source.

On the other hand, you have kept the story about the tradition of eating ham evolving from the Germanic ritual of sacrificing a wild boar. This is footnoted to Rudolf Simek's book Die Wikinger. Simek is of course an authority on the Norse. Unfortunately, I don't have this book, but even if I did, the footnote doesn't reference a specific page number, so it will be hard to verify this source: he presumably discusses their wild boar sacrifices, but does he discuss a connection with modern food habits? If he does, is it just an offhand remark, or does he have evidence of a continuous tradition connecting Germanic sacrifices with modern ham? Have you consulted at this book? Why does the article use the weasel words "is thought to have evolved"? Is that what Simek said?

In any case, the Germanic ritual is certainly unconnected with the tradition in North America (outside perhaps some Scandinavian immigrant communities), since in the 19th century, ham was not the typical food for Christmas. --Macrakis (talk) 22:32, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Yule is not restricted to Scandinavia: it's a word common to English (a West Germanic language) and North Germanic languages, and occurs as early as Gothic, an extinct East Germanic language. This was a holiday specific to Germanic language-speaking peoples.

"Thought to evolve" is not a weasel word. We have large gaps in history. However, by way of linguistics, we know there has been a continuum of winter holiday festivities referred to as 'Yule' since the early Germanic period, nearly 2,000 years ago.

There has been significant discussion about the consumption of pork during this period from folklorists, and folklorists are the individuals we need to be turning to for folk customs like specific calendar events and customs like consuming specific meals at specific times.

When I have some time, i will dig further into this later and provide further sources. As it stands, Simek is one of few sources on this page that should be here. :bloodofox: (talk) 23:58, 1 January 2024 (UTC)

Perhaps you could start with a page reference for Simek? And maybe tell us here what exactly he says.

I didn't say anything about "Yule". However, as far as I can tell, in modern English, Yule is simply a "literary archaism" (OED) for the celebration of Christmas. I am not aware of a Yule celebration distinct from Christmas in the modern Anglosphere (except perhaps in Scandinavian immigrant communities).

We do have solid sources (see my article) that ham was not the standard Christmas centerpiece in the US in the 19th century.

I look forward to learning more from folkloristics sources about the continuity (or not) of boar and ham consumption for Christmas. --Macrakis (talk) 16:35, 2 January 2024 (UTC)