Is it lunch or dinner?

Marmight, I’d completely forgotten this, but some girls at my school in the 60s (in what was then Warwickshire) used to call their morning break time snack ‘lunch’.
As far as I remember, I just called mine my Marmite sandwich. 🙂

We do call it Christmas Dinner eaten around 1pm. It's the only time of year we eat a full meal at that time of day. Easter and Thanksgiving are always around 6pm.

We did grow up having Sunday dinner (roast) at noonish after church, but all of us in my family have changed to main meal at 6pm, except for Christmas!

It works for us because everything is tidied up early, and some of my family have other dinners at in-laws to go to in the late afternoon. They have to pace themselves!

I always have Yorkshire puddings with my Christmas tirkey, or chicken, in my case.

Christmas dinner, what with all the trimmings, though I’m noted for forgetting the ‘pigs in’ and leaving them in the oven. I like to time it so we’ve eaten just before HRM’s message.
As for the names of meals according to time of day #don’tcarejusteat.com

Lunch at 12:30, it's just the two of us, plain ordinary menu.

Christmas Dinner has always been Christmas Dinner irrespective of the time. But that's not the general rule otherwise!!

Always been dinner to me.

Coming from a working-class Lancashire family as I do, dinner was always the midday meal and we had tea, which may have been a simple cooked meal like egg and chips, when dad got home from work or at about 6pm at weekends. We had Christmas Dinner round about 2pm (when the sprouts were boiled to death).

Later, after I'd been to university, left home, got married and realised that you don't have to do what your parents did, it was lunch at midday and dinner in the evening. Even later, after I'd married for the second time of asking and was living in central(ish) London, it was lunch midday (brown bag or something from the sandwich shop) and supper in the evening if eating at home, and dinner was when we went out to eat. That's still pretty much my model, it's a city-slicker's way I admit.

But Christmas Dinner has always been Christmas Dinner. It's a special meal, like one eaten out, and a one-off in the year.

Lunch every day of the year except Christmas Day when it’s Christmas Dinner at around 2pm. If we eat our evening meal in it’s supper but we “go out for dinner”.
I’ve lived in Scotland for 36 years and have never heard a state school called Public Marmight, is it a city thing?

Christmas Dinner, whatever time.

I wish I could eat it with my family, either son or daughter, but DH won’t agree and I won’t desert him.
If we go to a latish church service, we just have a starter at around 12.30 then the main course when it is ready, but otherwise we eat the main course only at 1 pm, with Christmas tea later on, probably whatever we would have as a starter, if that makes sense.

I always call the main meal dinner which I eat at 7pm. My neighbour eats her main meal, including Christmas Day, at 11.45 to ‘get it out of the way’.

Christmas lunch for us around 1.00 and a late light supper around 9.00 was the norm. Now we do a much more relaxed affair to host DD1 and both teenage GDs at whatever time suits.

We took turns hosting with extended family when our girls were young, far too many now though to all be together and us older generation host our own close families and GC now.

Christmas Day is always a very relaxed affair, usually a dozen of us, with family members taking turns to host. This year is DS’s turn, who announced last night over our bonfire meal that the Turkey is ordered, from the farmer we all use.
Lunch and the time usually at 2pm, which then stretches and relaxes into the evening, with family chatting for hours🙂, usually over a tipple or two and cheese, nuts etc.

Christmas dinner, served about 2, give or take, after a walk to our local where regulars get a free drink. The evening is generally snacking, nothing really prepped.

I imagine I say both. I am meal time names fluid

Christmas dinner, school dinners both in the middle of the day.

It's always been dinner here. Dinner at midday ish and tea in the evening. Here posh people have lunch at midday and dinner in the evening.

On Christmas day we call the hot meal 'Christmas Dinner', usually served around 1 whoever is hosting.
A cold buffet in the evening is 'tea'.
But that is just tradition, not really fussed what it's called as long as no-one is late!

For me dinner and Lunch are interchangeable I don't care what anyone calls it as long as we eat it. We aim for somewhere between 2 and 3 and refuse to stress about it.

Christmas time, it's Christmas dinner , in our house that's around the middle of the afternoon. Usually our main meal is eaten in the evening and that is dinner. Lunch is something light eaten midday, or in my case well into the afternoon.

Dinners eaten in the middle of the day is something I associate with school days, everyone called them school dinners. Other than that dinner for me is an evening meal. For example, if going out in the evening for a meal it's "going out to dinner" or middle of the day "going out to lunch" although that sometimes can constitute the main meal of the day. Semantics!

Northerner here too and the middle of the day meal was always dinner, as in school dinners, and the meal you had at home later was your tea.

This is still how it is where DDs1&3 live in northern parts of England but here in Scotland it seems to be lunch and dinner.

Having lived up and down the length of Great Britain at various times, I just go with the flow.

Christmas dinner although for the rest. of the year, dinner is in the evening and lunch is at, erm, lunchtime. I went to a posh private prep school where ‘lunch’ was a snack taken during the mid morning break and dinner was at lunch time although when I got home, after tea, we had dinner; which takes me on to schools. (Sorry to go off at a tangent!) In Scotland a Public school is a state school. South of the border it’s a private school. No wonder visitors to the UK are confused. I’m confused 🤷‍♀️

Being a northerner, I was brought up calling any midday meal ( roughly between 11am - 3pm?) 'dinner', even if it was just a sandwich, so our Christmas Dinner was no different.

That said, I've been wracking my brains trying to remember if we still called it that if it was served later instead. I don't think we did - I think it was just 'the Christmas meal'.
Certainly not Christmas tea, anyway - that was always the late afternoon/early evening cold, buffet-type meal served hours after the dinner.

Slightly off- topic now, but did anyone else hear a weather forecaster this last week refer to "bonfire evening"?
I've never heard it called that before in my life - it's always been bonfire night. It sounded most odd!

The joys of being alone.

MissAdventure

Dinner, I think.
I eat mine whenever I fancy it.

Same here.

Linner - a mid-day substantial meal
(A word that my friend coined; I’m not crazy about how it sounds)