With the Christmas period continuing through to early January, might I urge Catholics to “hold the line” – to keep their trees and decorations up and to keep their supply of mulled wine and mince pies abundant. These things are important – though folk may not realise it, they’re at the centre of a long conflict over what it means to be English and what it means to be a Christian in this country.
Mince pies are an English food. One may notice that they go against the grain somewhat regarding the (sadly often accurate) stereotypes about our cuisine. It is not a simple meat-and-two-veg dish. It’s neither spartan, frugal, bland nor tasteless. On the contrary. It’s lavished with a rich, splendorous cacophony of sweet flavour and spices. Which could only mean one of two things: it’s either a really old tradition or a really new one.
It’s the former: the mince pie, or Christmas pie (as it was known), is a product of the High Middle Ages. Returning crusaders in the 13th century brought back to Anglia from the Holy Land a series of Levantine recipes and methods of cooking which included such ingredients as cinnamon, cloves and nutmeg.
In an era of religious fervour, and the appropriate feasting at the times appointed by the Church’s liturgical calendar (something far more central to the life of a medieval Englishman or woman than it is to us), this corresponded to the rapid growth in popularity of a curious tradition in which a tasty pie was reserved as the culinary treat of the Christmastide repertoire for ordinary folk. The pie contained suet, fruit, minced meat, and the aforementioned trio of exotic spices.
Though they can be traced with confidence to the 13th century, one of the first explicit recipes we still have is from a 1390 cookbook written on a scroll and titled A Forme of Cury, which additionally advised the inclusion of boiled eggs as ingredients. A lack of a standardised recipe notwithstanding, a number of ingredients and features were constant: one of which was that the pie was traditionally baked in an oblong shape to resemble a manger, with the depiction of the Christ child adorning it.
It became a staple of a time that has since been termed since “Merrie England”, when the Catholic faith was deeply integrated and interwoven into daily lives, art, secular music, language, foods and seasons of the year – and joy and lavish celebration balanced asceticism and penance. That folk would have no reservations about piously consuming something which bore the image of Our Lord is no wonder either, as the sacramental consciousness of the era was profoundly felt. Consider this, from one among many anonymous pieces of medieval English prose:
Hit semeth whiȝth & hit is reed
Hit is quyk & semeþ deed
Hit is flessh & semeth breed
and veray god in his godhed.
[Which translates as:]
It seemeth white and it is red;
It is alive and seemeth dead;
It is flesh and seemeth bread;
And is true God in his Godhead.
But then! Enter the Protestant Reformation. Staples of English culture, at once almost entirely bound up with Catholic belief, are hushed. To be a Catholic in England is quickly deemed an act of treason by the various Tudor regimes (with the exception of Mary I) and anything which could associate you with the old religion might lead to your home being ransacked, ruinous fines, or – in the worst case scenario – a torturous death.
It’s important not to understate the profoundly eviscerating effect this had on centuries of tradition and custom across the land in every area of life. Indeed, many have wondered why the British eat so little seafood given we have one of the longest cumulative coastlines in the world and some of the best produce. Look no further than the Protestant deformation. With the abnegation of Friday abstinence disciplines, during which Englishmen would typically take their meal from the seas, priest-hunters were quick to create a paranoid atmosphere in which anyone seen eating this “popish flesh” was suspected a Catholic.
The forces the Tudors unleashed with the Reformation quickly escaped their control – there was soon a growing group of largely ambitious upper-middle-class radicals agitating that the Reformation had not gone far enough. Cathedrals (those symbols of vanity and decadence) had to go. Vestments, out. Bishops – who are these but pharisees? Christmas; surely Christ would despise such Pagan revelry.
After the English Civil War, the Puritans enjoyed almost sole influence over the laws of Cromwell’s commonwealth and they took a hatchet to many of the things English folk held dear. Cultural practices which had been suppressed under the Tudors were obliterated under the new regime. Opus Anglicanum, English embroidery so sought after on the continent and regarded as the pinnacle of quality that Venetian merchants prized it, disappeared. Nottingham Alabaster, the (once again world-beating) tradition of English religious sculpture, vanished. Who knows what other artistic and culinary treasures have been lost.
The English were not wont to take this lying down, however. They took a stand over their deeply prized Christmas. The trigger-happy Puritan iconoclasm led to pro-Christmas riots across the country after a law forbidding the celebration of the holiday was enforced in 1647. There was mass disobedience, and folk adorned their doorways with holly and other decorations. The mince pie, as a staple of the merriment of the season, was saved through this interregnum period.
The very existence of the mince pie irked many of the foremost Puritan leaders and writers. It became the target of a barrage of polemics. Marchamont Needham, often titled Cromwell’s “press agent” and propagandist, warned of mince pies:
All Plums the Prophets Sons defy,
And Spice-broths are too hot;
Treason’s in a December-Pye,
And Death within the Pot.
Another critique warned: “The Christmas-pie is, in its own nature, a kind of consecrated cake, and a badge of distinction; and yet it is often forbidden, the Druid of the family.”
Though no explicit law was passed in Parliament, it is understood that the mince pie was specifically persecuted by the Puritan authorities, who made the paranoid claim that it was the source of superstition and pagan evil. Samuel Johnson and writers well into the late 18th century reported meeting Quakers and various forms of nonconformist Protestants who bore utter disdain for, and suspicion of, the festive pie.
One account notes that they “inveigh against Christmas Pye, as an Invention of the Scarlet Whore of Babylon, an Hodge-Podge of Superstition, Popery, the Devil and all his Works”.
The Puritans were right about one thing though. The mince pie was a relic and staple of Catholicism in English culture. Its popularity bore a problem. For how could anything which grew out of the ways of the “Whore of Babylon” be anything but evil?
Thus a war over the past and a war over Englishness ensued. The “Scarlet Whore” could not be allowed a concession or a cultural victory, and although the Anglican establishment and its adherents would make some effort to correct the most egregious excesses of Protestant revisionism, the English largely forgot their ancient flourishing religious culture and its glories.
This process has continued it would seem. I have two friends soon to take the UK citizenship test (one Polish, another Belgian). In it, they will be asked such mind-numbing questions as “which of the following is not a British value” from a multiple choice list of something like: tolerance, inclusion, the rule of law, giving the boot to an old and infirm lady. The mundane characteristics our cosmopolitan overlords associate with Englishness are only an impoverished version of what we really are.
Some of our more substantive and colourful traditions never died. Might I recommend that over the Christmas period and beyond, you pay homage to the English crusaders and the pro-Christmas rioters who wouldn’t accept the erasure of their deeply treasured ancient Faith lying down.
Remember that Englishness once had flourish and religious fervour. Enjoy and celebrate that with your mince pies.
Photo: Mince pies are served to the riders of the Heythrop Hunt meeting in spite of the 2004 ban on fox hunting in Chipping Norton town centre on Boxing Day in Oxfordshire, England, 26 December 2018. (Photo by Jack Taylor/Getty Images.)
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