Feasts and feasting in the fourteenth century - Gawain and the Green Knight

The fourteenth century romance, Gawain and the Green Knight, contains what is believed to be the earliest descriptions of Christmas feasting in English literature. The ostentatious displays at Camelot are interrupted by the arrival of a Green Knight, whose challenges demand that Gawain seek him out at the Green Chapel the following year. On his journey, Gawain stops at a castle and his host welcomes him and shares his “fasting” meals as well as the elaborate feasts of Christmas Day. The poem gives detailed descriptions of extravagant feasts, as well as accounts of Christian feasting which display resonances of earlier pagan rituals