ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the descriptions of food and feasting in England in the fourteenth century with specific reference to the medieval romance Gawain and the Green Knight, which gives what is believed to be the earliest descriptions of Christmas. In the British Library in London is a small, unassuming manuscript measuring five inches by seven inches. It contains 90 leaves of parchment, has the shelfmark Cotton Nero A.x., and contains the poem Gawain and the Green Knight, along with three devotional poems (Pearl, Patience, and Cleanness). The poem ends with Gawain confronting the Green Knight at the allotted time and facing his final challenge. Although Mummer's plays are associated with the coming of spring, Withington notes that the fixing of Christian ecclesiastical feasts has shifted the seasons of the festivals, which accounts for the performances of these plays at Christmas.
