Christmas Hampers Past and Present

This week I have been looking at the history of Christmas hampers or what Americans call gift baskets.

The Christmas Hamper by Robert Braithwaite Martineau

Apparently, William the Conqueror brought the idea of gift hampers to England. The word is said to be derived from the French word ‘hanapier’ meaning a case for goblets. As Frenchmen William’s supporters would have appreciated a good glass of wine with their venison and goose at Christmas but they were unlikely to get one in England in 1066 so William no doubt had them shipped over.  Indeed getting food from home when abroad has been one of the key drivers of the development of the hamper as we know it today.

At the end of the 18th century, the improvement in roads and the introduction of Flying Coaches in England saw barrels of oysters, cheeses, and turkeys being sent out of London to the provinces but the trade really took off with the development of the railways in the 19th century when perishable food could be transported quickly.

The Roman Spa at Bath

The most famous hamper in the world is most probably the Fortnum and Mason’s Christmas hamper. This stalwart of the British establishment started life as a picnic basket. Fortnum’s first hampers were created in the late 1730s for their well-heeled customers journeying to their country estates or to taking the waters in Bath.





Many of these well-healed customers began their journeys at the coaching inns along Piccadilly and Fortnum’s was in the right place to meet their needs. Food en route was often poor; but that could be rectified with a basket of goodies from Fortnum’s containing generous game pies, fresh bread, West Country butter, ‘scotched eggs’, cheese, hothouse fruit and rich fruit cake, with mineral water, small beer and hock wine to drink. No wonder they took off.

A modern Fortnum and Mason Hamper

The 18th century Romantic Movement encouraged enjoyment of the English countryside, and picnics (first known by the less catchy name of fêtes champêtres) quickly became fashionable amongst those rich enough to own a carriage, creating a whole new demand for the hamper. In fact a good picnic became de rigueur at events such as the Harrow versus Eton cricket match, the Henley and Cowes Regattas, and the Epsom Derby. Derby Day was a particularly important day in the calendar, with carriage drivers queuing up from 4am to pick up their master’s Fortnum’s picnic basket.

Boarding School Boys

Requirements of Empire made many British men and women live or fight abroad until 1945 and the tradition of Boarding School also means the British elite live away from home from a young age.

I know from my own experience of living abroad that ex-patriots always long for the food comforts of home no matter how comfortable they be abroad and Fortnum’s was there to keep up the morale of Wellington’s soldiers as they fought Napoleon in 1815.

Ist Duke of Wellington

They also organised the delivery of beef tea to Florence Nightingale to nourish her patients which was sent by Queen Victoria and during the First World War troops, prisoners of war and Red Cross outposts received Christmas parcels, including one of 500 Christmas puddings organised by the company.

Although Fortnum’s is a by-word for luxury today a Christmas hamper does not have to be expensive. Christmas is above all about the past, it is a time to reminisce and reflect, a time for remembering family and friends.


Each year we try to recreate our memory of Christmas but as Marcel Proust said, “It is a labour in vain to attempt to recapture it [the past]: all the efforts of our intellect must prove futile. The past is hidden somewhere outside the realm, beyond the reach of intellect, in some material object.”

The tastes and smells of our own Christmases past powerfully evoke fond memories and reminders of home. It was dipping his Madeleine in tea that did it Proust. He wrote:

"As I came home, my mother, seeing that I was cold, offered me some tea, a thing I did not ordinarily take. I declined at first, and then, for no particular reason, changed my mind. She sent out for one of those short, plump little cakes called 'petites madeleines,' which look as though they had been moulded in the fluted scallop of a pilgrim's shell. And soon, mechanically, weary after a dull day with the prospect of a depressing morrow, I raised to my lips a spoonful of the tea in which I had soaked a morsel of the cake. No sooner had the warm liquid, and the crumbs with it, touched my palate, a shudder ran through my whole body, and I stopped, intent upon the extraordinary changes that were taking place. An exquisite pleasure had invaded my senses, but individual, detached, with no suggestion of its origin. And at once the vicissitudes of life had become indifferent to me, its disasters innocuous, its brevity illusory--this new sensation having had on me the effect which love has of filling me with a precious essence; or rather this essence was not in me, it was myself. I had ceased now to feel mediocre, accidental, mortal. Whence could it have come to me, this all-powerful joy? "

Homemade Christmas Cake

Food has a way of evoking memory like nothing else. For the British I would say that the taste and especially the smell of food like the full English breakfast with crispy bacon, flaccid pink sausages, black pudding and HP sauce or the taste of a piece of luscious rich fruit cake generously laced with brandy or rum and covered with a thick layer of marzipan and icing that does it for us especially at Christmas.

Today there are companies supplying home comforts to British exiles all over the world. The items most requested are packets of tea, McVitee's digestive biscuits, the much loved, soft waxy Cadbury's Dairy Milk, Heinz baked beans and Marmite. None of these items is expensive or luxurious but they do provide the much craved Proustian moment.







Sources:
https://www.fortnumandmason.com/fortnums/history-of-the-hamper

https://www.fisheaters.com/proust.html

Photos.com/Photos.com/Getty Images

A modern American Gift Basket

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