Of the many traditions associated with the Christmas season, some of the biggest have to do with food.

Foods that are often eaten only at this time of year and seldom outside of the season.

Unlike other Christmas traditions, food can vary greatly in different places as well as through time.

Many Christmas foods eaten in the past can even be found today.

Learn more about Christmas foods and how these traditions differ around the world and throughout history on this

episode of Everything Everywhere Daily. I might as well start the episode by taking a look back to see what people ate during Christmas in the past.

The differences in foods had a lot to do with the fact that foods couldn't be shipped long distances and that people also had to eat within the seasons.

The traditional central dish for many Christmas dinners, especially in England, was goose.

When Ebenezer Scrooge wakes up on Christmas morning, the first thing he does is send someone out to buy a Christmas goose.

Goose was central for a Christmas feast for several reasons.

The first is that many farms would have geese on them.

Geese, unlike chickens, had to be fed throughout the winter

and didn't lay eggs during this period either.

However, a goose was great for scavenging on a field that had already been harvested,

eating loose grain.

By the time Christmas rolled around, they were at their fattest.

So it was cheaper to eat a goose for Christmas than it was to eat a chicken.

Plus, it was that time of the year when goose needed to be harvested.

Geese are also considered high quality having some of the softest fat

with the lowest melting point of any regularly consumed animal fat.

Today, geese are still sometimes eaten for Christmas, but they've largely

been replaced by turkeys, which are larger. In the Middle Ages, another bird was often served

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