It's hard to believe the Christmas holidays are once again upon us. 
Along with the holidays, several traditional foods and beverages make their annual appearance.  Have you ever wondered how these tasty traditions started?  Here's a little insight to how some of the most popular Christmas foods began:

FRUITCAKE:

Americans have a love-hate relationship with fruitcake. What comes to your mind when you think of a fruitcake?  Do you think of it as a rich, moist cake filled with delicious fruit and nuts, or a dried out “brick”? Fruitcakes  inspire many jokes.  Even Johnny Carson once joked, “There’s only one fruitcake in the U.S., and it’s passed around year after year from family to family".

Maybe people today dislike fruitcake because so many of them are mass-produced using cheap, inferior ingredients. If you have eaten one of those dry, tasteless commercial fruitcakes made with bitter citron that are sold in supermarkets, its no doubt that any future fruitcake is looked upon with distaste. Even the so called "gourmet" fruitcakes are full of preservatives and things like melon rinds colored to look like cherries.

The oldest reference that can be found regarding a fruitcake dates back to Roman times. The recipe included pomegranate seeds. Pine nuts, and raisins that were mixed into barley mash. Honey, spices, and preserved fruits were added during the Middle Ages. Crusaders and hunters were reported to have carried this
type of cake to sustain themselves over long periods of time away from home.

1400s - The British began their love affair with fruitcake when dried fruits from the Mediterranean first arrived.

1700s - In Europe, a ceremonial type of fruitcake was baked at the end of the nut harvest and saved and eaten the next year to celebrate the beginning of the next harvest, hoping it will bring them another successful harvest. After the harvest, nuts were mixed and made into a fruitcake that was saved until the following year. At that time, previous year's fruitcakes were consumed in the hope that its symbolism would bring the blessing of another successful harvest.

No one knows for sure why and how the fruitcake became associated with the holidays, but it most likely came from the English who passed out slices of cake to poor women who sang
Christmas carols in the street during the late 1700s.

In the early 18th century, fruitcake (called plum cakes) was outlawed entirely throughout Continental Europe. These cakes were considered as "sinfully rich." By the end of the 18th century there were laws restricting the use of plum cake.

Between 1837 and 1901, fruitcake was extremely popular. 
A Victorian "Tea" would not have been complete without the
addition of the fruitcake to the sweet and savory spread. 
Queen Victoria is said to have waited a year to eat a fruitcake
she received for her birthday because she felt it showed restraint,
moderation and good taste. 

It was the custom in England for unmarried wedding guests to put a slice of the cake, traditionally a dark fruitcake, under their
pillow at night so they will dream of the person they will marry.

Mail-order fruitcakes in America began in 1913.

For the past 12 years, residents in Mantiou, Colorado partake in an annual "Fruit Cake Toss" to see who can hurl their fruitcakes the farthest.  There are several categories in which contestants can complete.  The categories include launch, toss, hurl and pnematic devises.  Winners receive trophies for placing first in
their respective divisions.

CANDY CANES:

When the practice of using Christmas trees to celebrate Christmas
became popular in Europe the people there began making decorations for their trees. Many of the decorations were food items including cookies and candy. The predecesor of our modern candy cane appeared at about this time in the seventeenth century. These were straight, white sticks of sugar candy.

Part of the Christmas celebration at the Cologne Cathedral were pagents of living creches. In about 1670 the choirmaster there had sticks of candy bent into the shape of a shepherd’s crook and passed them out to children who attended the ceremonies. This became a popular tradition, and eventually the practice of passing out the sugar canes at living creche ceremonies spread throughout Europe. The canes were still white, but sometimes the candy-makers would add sugar-roses to decorate the canes further.

The first historical reference to the candy cane being in America
goes back to 1847, when a German immigrant named August Imgard decorated the Christmas tree in his Wooster, Ohio home with candy canes. 

About fifty years later the first red-and-white striped candy canes appeared.  No one knows who exactly invented the stripes, but Christmas cards prior to the year 1900 showed only all-white candy canes. Christmas cards after 1900 showed illustrations of striped candy canes. Around the same time, candy-makers
added peppermint and wintergreen flavors to their candy canes
and those flavors then became the traditional favorites.

A Catholic priest named Gregory Keller invented a machine to
automate candy cane production during the 1950's.

GINGERBREAD:

The first gingerbread is thought to have been made by Catholic monks in Europe for special holidays and festivals. England, France, and especially Germany were known to eat and celebrate with gingerbread treats. Ginger was called "zingebar" in Latin, "gingerbras" in Old French and "gingerbread" in Medieval England. "Lebkuchen" is the German word for gingerbread.

Until the fifteenth century, "gingerbread" referred only to preserved
ginger itself. Ginger was found to have preservative qualities and in the fifteenth century it began to be used in cakes and cookies. Crusaders returning to Europe from the Middle East brought back spices such as ginger and catholic monks formed the ginger into cakes and pressed it into molds. Gingerbread also became a popular treat at European fairs and was added to meat to preserve it and help cover up the strong odor of aging meat.

Gingerbread was not baked in homes in the fifteenth century, but rather was made by government-recognized guilds. Nuremberg, Germany was the location of the best known guild. The German guild was famous for elaborately detailing the lebkuchen with gold paint or with icing. The guild was called the Lebkuchner and was formed in 1643 as a means of quality-control reasons as well as a way to limit competition in making the lebkuchen gingerbread.

The quality of the Nuremberg guild's lebkuchen gingerbread was so high that it was even used as currency for paying city taxes. The lebkuchen was also considered a gift worthy of heads of state and royalty. Lebkuchen gingerbread is still sold in Nuremberg today.

Gingerbread cut into shapes, especially hearts, and tied with ribbon became a popular treat sold in fairs throughout Europe. Human and animal figures were also popular. The Brothers Grimm fairy tale, Hansel and Gretel, inspired the German "hexenhaeusle," or witch's house. "Lebkuchenhaeusle," the gingerbread house, was made with large slabs of lebkuchen and decorated with sweets.

The first gingerbread in the United States is thought to have been brought by Swiss Catholic monks who founded the St. Meinrad Archabbey in Indiana in 1854. Monks gave gingerbread to the sick and baked it for holiday celebrations. Baking gingerbread cookies and gingerbread houses to celebrate the Christmas
holiday became a tradition in the United States that is still popular today.

American bakers often sweeten gingerbread with molasses, while British bakers may use syrup and brown sugar. Germans usually sweeten lebkuchen gingerbread with honey. Honey is the traditional sweetener used in the original lebkuchen made by the guild in Nuremberg as the area had many forests containing beehives.
Aside from ginger, cinnamon is the next most common spice used in gingerbread.   Cloves, nutmeg, cardamom, and sometimes anise are other spices commonly found in many gingerbread recipes.

WASSAIL:

From its earliest times the term “wassail” referred to the drink itself, a hot spiced wine for drinking healths on Christmas Eve, New Year’s Eve, and Twelfth Night celebrations. It was said to have originated with the fifth-century legend of the beautiful Saxon Rowena, who toasted the health of the English King Vortigern with the words “Wass-hael”(your health!). Her spiced wine concoction was a form of the ancient Roman mulled wine. Both the wine
and the spice were imported and very expensive as England
did not have the climate to produce wines. In later centuries the wine was replaced with fine local ales, making it more characteristically English and far more available to the great majority. As the British developed spice plantations
in their tropical Asian and Indian colonies, the cost of spices was gradually reduced and consequently they were more available for special occasions.

The recipes were flexible and variable and each family with means enough had its own. Sometimes it was a last-minute preparation, but on occasion it was  prepared some three days in advance of its use and bottled. In such cases it was deemed ready for use when the pressure of the gasses formed by ongoing fermentation
popped the cork, at which time only a few final touches were required to bring it to  the serving bowl.

In one form of wassail called Lamb's Wool, ale or dark beer was whipped to form a surface froth in which floated roasted crab apples.  The hissing pulp bursting from them resembled wool. Many surviving recipes show the addition of wines and sugar, and some thickened the brew with eggs, often pouring the mixture back and forth between pan and bowl to reach the proper degree of foam. Some wassail bowls were enriched with cream. In most cases the popular seasonings were nutmeg, cinnamon, cloves, grated fresh ginger, and lemon.

EGGNOG:

Many believe that eggnog is a tradition that was brought to America from Europe. This is partially true. Eggnog is related to various milk and wine punches that had been concocted long ago in the "Old World". However, in America a new twist was put on the theme. Rum was used in the place of wine. In Colonial America, rum was commonly called "grog", so the name eggnog is likely derived from the very descriptive term for this drink, "egg-and-grog", which corrupted to egg'n'grog and soon to eggnog.

Other experts would have it that the "nog" of eggnog comes
from the word "noggin". A noggin was a small, wooden, carved mug. It was used to serve drinks at table in taverns (while drinks beside the fire were served in tankards). It is thought that eggnog started out as a mixture of Spanish "Sherry" and milk.

With it's European roots and the availability of the ingredients,
eggnog soon became a popular wintertime drink throughout Colonial America. It had much to recommend it; it was rich, spicy, and alcoholic.

In the 1820's Pierce Egan, a period author, wrote a book called "Life of London: or Days and Nights of Jerry Hawthorne and His Elegant Friend Corinthina Tom". To publicize his work Mr. Egan made up a variation of eggnog he called "Tom and Jerry". It added 1/2 oz of brandy to the basic recipe (fortifying it considerably and adding further to its popularity).

Eggnog, in the 1800s was nearly always made in large quantities and nearly always used as a social drink. It was commonly served at holiday parties.

Of course, Christmas was not the only day upon which eggnog was popular.  In Baltimore it was a tradition for young men to call upon all of their friends on New years day. At each of many homes the strapping fellows were offered a cup of eggnog, and so as they went they became more and more inebriated. It was quite a feat to actually finish one's rounds.

Our first President, George Washington, was quite a fan of eggnog and devised his own recipe that included rye whiskey, rum and sherry. It was reputed to be a stiff drink that only the most courageous were willing to try.

Eggnog is still a popular drink during the holidays, and its social character remains.

Eggnog literally means eggs inside a small cup.
It is used as a toast to ones health. Nog is an old English
dialect word (from East Anglia) of obscure origins that was
used to describe a kind of strong beer (hence noggin). It is
first recorded in the seventeenth century. Eggnog, however, is
first mentioned in the early nineteenth century but seems to have been popular on both sides of the Atlantic at that time. An alternative British name was egg flip.

It all began in England, where eggnog was the trademark drink
of the upper class. In those days, the average Londoner
rarely saw a glass of milk.  There was no refrigeration, and the
farms belonged to the big estates. Those who could get milk and
eggs to make eggnog mixed it with brandy or Madeira or even sherry. But it became most popular in America, where farms and dairy products were plentiful, as was rum. Rum came to these shores via the Triangular Trade from the Caribbean and it was far more affordable than the heavily taxed brandy or other European spirits at that time.

CLOSING:

Regardless of where the foods originated from, there's not doubt they will be around for many years to come.  So.......

Eat, drink and be merry!  And have a wonderful Christmas!!!

Many Regards,

Wanda of Two Crafty Mules

http://stores.ebay.com/Two-Crafty-Mules