Presumably most people still eat turkey on Christmas Day, though some prefer goose. The French, who are reputed to spend a greater proportion of their income on food than the rest of us, have a weakness for oysters at Christmas, though hardly as a main dish. In small inland villages you may see oysters for sale. Of course, there must be many variations of fare throughout Europe.
A big baked fish, carp for example; and a Christmas buffet could have as its centrepiece the fish that abounds in Irish waters but which we resolutely will not eat - pike. Maybe in some countries the wild boar figures. Does anyone eat bear? No, probably not. But venison of one kind or another. And, just to be different maybe, a German magazine gives a Christmas menu of four dishes, the main course of which is lobster, with crushed caraway and ginger (first course being a celery and avocado salad, topped with a cherry tomato, the celery lightly cooked.)
What of Irish Christmases of the past? Our friend Humphrey O'Sullivan, or Amhlaoibh O Suilleabhain, in his diary records several Christmases in Callan, Co Kilkenny, where as son of a hedge schoolmaster from Kerry, then a school master himself and later a businessman, he became well-established. On December 25th, 1827, he first notes "the yellow primrose, a flower which normally doesn't blossom until March. But this Christmas is so mild and soft ... I have roasted goose with potato stuffing for dinner, thank God for it. May God grant us a good and happy Christmas." December 30th: "I have pig's trotters and rich bacon for my dinner. No better dish."
Christmas 1828: "The poor people are buying pork chops, pig's heads, big joints of old sows' loins, and small bits of old rams, as the good meat has already been bought up by the well-off, well-fed people. He who comes last will be the loser, as usual." He disapproves of the Wren Boy activities, asking for money "so that they can be drunk tonight." Three years before, he declares, a riot broke out and 14 people were killed and 100 injured at the Brothers' Chapel.
December 25th, 1830: "Easter Sunday and Christmas Day are the two best days for the stomach." And this bit, put in italics. The whole diary was edited by the later Tomas de Bhaldraithe - the summary "The Diary of an Irish Countryman" is published by Mercier in paperback.
That item about the man who caught a salmon, shot a brace of grouse and felled a stag all in one day is, according to a letter in Country Life, not based on Buchan's story. The writer refutes an earlier letter on the subject. Anyway the man in our item of yesterday caught, shot and felled what he said he did. End of correspondence.