In Medieval Times the marking of Christmas by Class started with Advent Sunday.
The period between the fourth before Christmas and Christmas Day was a period of a limited diet, the more so for the poor than the rich obviously.
Advent Sunday is the fourth before Christmas and this year fell on 28th November.
People were enjoined to limit their diet during Advent. For the wealthy this meant soups, stews and fish instead of roasts or pies. The poorer, however, could find the reduction a misery. In the fifteenth century James Ryman complained of eating ‘no puddings nor sauce, but stinking fish not worth a louse’
Ronald Hutton, Stations of the Sun
If you are following an Advent diet or even if you aren’t putting food aside for your local Foodbank seems like a good tradition
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