Over the last few days, we’ve been pondering, in a series of posts, the literary history of Father Christmas and Santa Claus. Yesterday, we looked at how Santa’s working relationship with the soft drinks industry is more complicated than we might think. Today, we’re moving from the world of drink to the world of food – and, in particular, to the important issue of Christmas dinner.

The relationship between Charles Dickens and Christmas is something we’ll come on to in a series of posts over the next couple of weeks, but today we’d like to recommend this 1835 ‘sketch’ – published when Dickens was in his early twenties – describing the perfect Christmas dinner.

The piece offers an insight into what the average nineteenth-century family did at Christmas time. This was in 1835, just before Queen Victoria came to the throne and the idea of the modern Christmas…