🎄 Christmas pudding

Christmas pudding, also called plum pudding, is the British festive dish of dried fruit, prunes and dates, candied peel, mixed spice, treacle, suet, eggs, breadcrumbs and dark brown sugar. It is made well ahead, about five weeks before Christmas, then reheated on the day, doused in warm brandy and carried to the table alight.

The making day has a name: Stir-up Sunday, the last Sunday before Advent, which falls on 22 November in 2026. The name comes not from stirring but from the Collect in the Book of Common Prayer that begins "Stir up, we beseech thee, O Lord". Since Victorian times, though, families gather that day: each person takes a turn stirring and makes a wish, stirring from east to west in honour of the Magi. Sometimes a silver coin goes into the mix for luck.

The pudding is older than its Christmas role. SOAS University of London traces it to plum pottage, a thick mix of meat, spices and dried fruit. In the 17th century the mixture was boiled in a floured cloth; in the 18th it turned sweet thanks to cheaper Caribbean sugar grown with the forced labour of enslaved Africans; and in 1843 Dickens's A Christmas Carol pictured it blazing with brandy and topped with holly.

Why this matters to you: to try the custom at home, Sunday 22 November 2026 is the day to mix the pudding, giving it time to mature before Christmas.