An English Christmas in the Middle Ages would begin before dawn with a mass that marked the end of Advent and the start of the holiday.
The Christmas feast was an EOE affair.
One memoirist of the period described his family's Christmas feast also to include sausages, pasties, black pudding, roast beef, fish, fowl, custards, tarts, nuts, and sweetmeats.
Royalty took things up a notch. In addition to the above goodies, King Henry III added salmon, eel, venison, and boar to his table; King Henry V, crayfish and porpoise.
Royalty also drank heartedly on Christmas.
Wine was served, not by the bottle, but—literally—by the ton (a ton equaling 1,272 bottles).
Henry III served 60 tons of wine on Christmas. That's more than 76,000 bottles!
