I found this wonderful article from Mail online about Henry VIII’s Christmas and what he wanted..

Excerpt:

His ideal present would have been a baby boy. Henry was only the second Tudor king, so to make him feel secure he needed a son to succeed him.

The first Christmas of his reign, his wife Katharine of Aragon miscarried a baby girl, but by his second she was pregnant again – and this time, with a boy.

The future Henry IX was born early on New Year’s Day. In London, bonfires were lit, bells pealed, wine flowed and the cannon at the Tower thundered out a welcome to the future king.

In the royal nurseries, there was a crimson draped cradle and the wet nurses were standing by.

But just weeks later, the little Prince died. Henry’s best Christmas had turned to disaster.

But while he wrestled with his anguish, how were his subjects celebrating the year’s greatest festival?

The pacing of a Tudor Christmas was very different to our own.

Celebrations lasted for 12 days but, king or commoner, you’d start the day hungry.

When Henry wanted to divorce Katharine and marry Anne Boleyn, he broke away from Rome and set up his own Church, but he still kept the Roman Catholic rituals.

The weeks before Christmas were a time of fasting and on Christmas Eve you ate fish, not meat.

Luckily for carnivores, the Tudor definition of fish was elastic: you could eat a gull, because it tasted of its fishy diet.

We have a lot of mistaken ideas about how the Tudors ate. They didn’t gnaw chicken greedily and throw bones on the floor, and there were no dogs fighting over scraps under trestle tables.

In a well-conducted house, the dogs – except for little spaniels – were exiled to kennels. Table manners were strict and refined.

Knowing how to cut your bread and what to do with your napkin was an infallible social signal that separated a gentleman from an oik, and every young noble learned to serve at table and to carve.

We’re sometimes told that the whole Tudor nation was vitamin deficient and never ate vegetables. But the fact is that because people grew their own, vegetables didn’t figure in household accounts.

They were eaten, in season, with enthusiasm – Henry loved artichokes – and intricate layered salads were popular in richer households.

There would be no salads in the depth of winter, though, and potatoes had not yet come to England, but for the Christmas table there would be root vegetables, perhaps roasted with honey in the comforting way we enjoy them today.

Turkey was introduced to England in the 1520s, but it was not a Christmas food – it was regarded as nutritious for invalids.

Goose was the popular Christmas meat, and the gilded, decorated head and forequarters of a boar were a fine display of a kitchen’s skill.

Joints of meat were often cooked in thick pastry cases to keep them moist, and the pastry was then discarded. To get a rich golden sheen on your meat, you could paint it with saffron and melted butter.

The most spectacular centrepiece at a rich man’s table was a young peacock, cooked and then re-inserted into its skin and feathers, the glowing tail spread and its neck stretched upright on a wire frame.

The Tudors liked food that looked like fun and this was certainly something they liked to exploit at Christmas time.