“WE were to have a superb dinner,” recalls David Copperfield, of Christmas Day when he was a boy, “consisting of a leg of pickled pork and greens, and a pair of roast stuffed fowls. A handsome mince-pie had been made yesterday morning… and the pudding was already on the boil.”

Later, an enormous pork pie would be brought in, which the assembled company, who had by now prodigiously indulged, somehow managed to squeeze in. As Joe Gargery, husband of the cook, said, “a bit of savoury pork pie would lay atop of anything you could mention, and do no harm”.

It was not a particularly happy occasion for young David, but with his talent for creating fictional feasts that set the mouth watering, Dickens conjured the spirit of the season by means of a laden table and many convivial and greedy mouths around it.

Thomas Carlyle, surely the dourest Scot of his generation, could not abide the novelist’s attitude to Christmas: “his theory of life was entirely wrong,” he wrote. “He believed that men should be buttered up, and the world made soft and accommodating for them, and all sorts of fellows should have turkey for Christmas dinner.”

That, however, is precisely what Christmas should bring: a heart-warming dinner for everyone, regardless of income. This year, however, as we approach the first festive season since the cost of living crisis began, it almost looks as if we are in danger of turning the clock back to Dickensian times. In that era, as increasingly in ours, hardship meant not just that many could not celebrate, but that, like every other day of the calendar, they went to bed as hungry as Oliver Twist.

Much has been written about Dickens being the creator of Christmas as we know it. What he would make of our current commercialised event is hard to guess; he would almost certainly approve, however, of the countless cookery books and TV shows demonstrating how to stir up an unforgettable feast. Indeed, he was such a keen entertainer at home that his Edinburgh-born wife, Catherine, compiled a book of recipes, designed to suit every budget. Even I, whose limit is boiling a Brussels sprout, find myself watching Jamie Oliver and taking mental notes of the bouquet garnet essential to delicious mashed celeriac and potato, or looking up Nigel Slater’s recipe for nut roast.

Yet it won’t have escaped anybody’s attention that the cost of providing the usual fare is going to outstrip that of previous years. When a trip to the shops for a week’s stocking up has already become an exercise in dismay, what faces us when preparing for the arrival of guests for their annual jamboree?

To follow Mrs Gargery’s dinner plans, with a leg of pork, greens, two stuffed fowls, mince pie, Christmas pudding, and a large pork pie, would cost well over £70. A goose is in another league from pork, coming in around £65 in Sainsbury’s, whilst a deluxe Christmas pudding (called plum pudding until it was rechristened following Dickens’s A Christmas Carol) to serve eight will range from £8.50 in Tescos to £39.95 in Fortnum & Mason’s.

But how simple a meal Mrs Gargery’s sounds, compared to all the furbelows that, for those like me, are the things we most enjoy about Christmas over-indulgence. I’m talking sage and onion stuffing, or the nibbles that go with drinks – Spanish olives, bite-sized tartlets, stuff on cocktail sticks – not to mention the wine or G&T they accompany. And the obligatory platter of cheeses, with port. Or cantucci with Vin Santo – those very words are as evocative as a verse of Silent Night.

And then there’s the after-dinner chocolates. And the midnight snacks, essential to get people safely through the night until a slap-up breakfast on Boxing Day, when further three-course repasts await. So far I’ve not even touched on Christmas cake which, for me, is the non plus ultra: there’s never room for it. But can you really call it Christmas, without succumbing to this nostalgic depth charge, which has been sitting on the floor of the bedroom cupboard, lapping up brandy, for the past six weeks?

Already food writers are offering tips on how to trim the menu without losing the sense of abundance and treats: make your own pigs in blankets, batch-prepare dips rather than stripping bare the deli shelves of M&S, substitute fried breadcrumbs for parmesan or pancetta, and ditch goose fat with your roast potatoes forever more.

Let’s not forget that Christmas has always been expensive, although some by temperament are more generous and lavish than others. December 2022, however, represents a new frontier, whether when offering hospitality or laying on a spread for yourself. Although the basics of the day have not dramatically risen in cost, turkey is now beginning to rival game birds for extravagance, sending the bills rocketing. As have all the fundamental little extras we’ve got used to gorging on.

Food and drink in general has grown markedly more expensive. At this season, the increase feels particularly noticeable, since our lives seem to revolve around the table. Regardless of its spiritual message, the winter solstice was always a time for hearty eating and quaffing, as people sustained themselves against the dark and cold.

Sadly, soaring grocery prices are not going to end when the decorations come down. Chances are, we’re going to have to get used to viewing food as a more significant outlay each week than ever before. Doubtless our priorities will have to change as a result, our belts tightening perhaps in every sense.

Yet this is not a recipe for gloom. There’s no better Christmas scene than in A Christmas Carol, where the hard-up Cratchitts put on their best faces to make an occasion, despite barely having a shilling to spare. There’s a goose – just enough to go around, when “eked out by apple sauce and mashed potatoes”. There’s the theatrical appearance of the plum pudding, baked in the copper washing tub, emerging “like a speckled cannon-ball” and set alight with brandy. Oranges, apples and roasted chestnuts finish off the meal, with a glass of hot punch.

Simple stuff, but turned into a feast through the family’s determination to instil a mood of merriment and joy. In this they were helped, no doubt, by the youngest children being “steeped in sage and onion to the eyebrows”.

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