[RubyRed]

  I'm beginning to get a bit twitchy and more than annoyed as we approach Christmas. With numerous magazines and telly programmes starting their countdown to the day can i make a plea. Please stop calling it Christmas lunch, it is not a light meal it is a pleasantly large one and therefore is dinner. I'm from the north and proud of it, and have always had dinner and tea regardless of how large or small the meal. To me a sandwich at 1pm is still dinner. A Christmas lunch sounds like a bit of Turkey with a salad on the side. Are you a Christmas dinner or lunch bunch.

[Pescador]

And to me a meal at mid-dayish is always lunch. Dinner is in the evening.
If I'm not certain what someone has invited me to, I just ask what time we are meeting
Not a problem!

[sunshineband]

When I was a child, our mid-day meal was dinner and our evening meal called tea, later snacks were supper

Now we seem to have adopted Lunch for the mid day meal, regardless of whether it be a toasted sandwich or a meal of several courses, whilst the evening meal is called Dinner, a snack before bed being Supper.

But we do have friends for whom the evening repast is entitled Supper

No set rules so far as I can see 

[AlaninCarlisle]

In my Northern youth, mid-day meal was dinner, evening meal was tea and supper was the biscuit with cocoa before you went to bed. It was only in Enid Blyton and Richmal Crompton's books that they were called luncheon and dinner. I mean whoever heard of school dinners being called school lunches and the women who cooked and served it being called Lunch Ladies?
Now in my dotage it's lunch and tea unless tea is in a restaurant when we call it dinner. The word "supper" is obsolete in our house

[mumofstig]

All explained here (perhaps!) 
https://www.ft.com/content/cddae7d0-552b-11db-acba-0000779e2340

[mumofstig]

I haven't thought what any of this means, but we had school 'dinners' with 'afters', not pudding, but had lunch on Saturday at home, probably because it was just a sandwich; that'll be why whenever we went out for a day-trip we always took a packed lunch 
The main meal  ie typically meat and 3 veg and afters, was always at 6pm  and mum called us in from play 'your tea's on the table!'  Dad had just enough time for a wash before we sat down to eat.
The big exception was a big meal at 1.30pm on the dot Sunday Lunch  Always a roast, if money didn't stretch to a joint, then mum stuffed and roasted lamb hearts with the roasties. It smelt the same when cooking so the neighbours didn't know what you were having, image was all important!

In those days the sea-food cart got pushed down the street on Sunday afternoons so everyone could buy their cockles, whelks and shrimps to go with brown bread and butter for tea, plus a bit of salad if you were lucky 

[Goosegirl]

I think the terms apply to where you came from which may get changed depending on where you move to. As a girl my dinner was at mid-day and tea was early evening. Now mid-day's meal is lunch and the evening meal is dinner. My friends in Oxfordshire have lunch at mid-day but call the evening meal supper.

[madcat]

To go back to the beginning of this thread and take a different tack ....

Do you have your Christmas Main Meal (whatever it is called) in the middle of the day, late afternoon or at evening meal time?  My Grandma was horrified when Mum moved it from 1pm to 5pm ... I now go for 8pm-ish and Mum is horrified ....

[Lardman]

Lunch is midday, Dinner is of an evening. Tea is a drink  School meals were school lunches, and there were lunch ladies (I suspect they're referred to as consumption consultants now).

This is not the case at Christmas; Christmas lunch is Christmas dinner served late for a 'lunch' to end as the Queen's speech starts any meal after that is supper. 

Well you asked 

[Plot 1 Problems]

Exactly as Lardman said! Saved me some typing there

[RubyRed]

I haven't thought what any of this means, but we had school 'dinners' with 'afters', not pudding, but had lunch on Saturday at home, probably because it was just a sandwich; that'll be why whenever we went out for a day-trip we always took a packed lunch 
The main meal  ie typically meat and 3 veg and afters, was always at 6pm  and mum called us in from play 'your tea's on the table!'  Dad had just enough time for a wash before we sat down to eat.
The big exception was a big meal at 1.30pm on the dot Sunday Lunch  Always a roast, if money didn't stretch to a joint, then mum stuffed and roasted lamb hearts with the roasties. It smelt the same when cooking so the neighbours didn't know what you were having, image was all important!

In those days the sea-food cart got pushed down the street on Sunday afternoons so everyone could buy their cockles, whelks and shrimps to go with brown bread and butter for tea, plus a bit of salad if you were lucky 

     was the salad a bit of sea wood that had stuck to the whelks

[RubyRed]

But to go back to my initial post, as Christmas meal is generally regarded as a bit of a blow out, calling it lunch which is described as a small light meal, is surely a misnomer regardless of what time its served.

[rowlandwells]

down south its normally termed  as lunch by some don't you know  but I must admit as a southerner my Mother used to say dinner was at dinner time and  we sat down as a family to eat at supper time usually when we came home from work


but there are some of the southern fraternity that wouldn't hear anything said but  lunch being at lunch time around midday TALLY"HO

[sunshineband]

And yet despite all this variance we always seem to know which meal someone is talking about somehow 

[mrs bouquet]

How about just bringing the big divide together, and just referring to it as "Our Christmas Day Main Meal".
You could then follow it by saying will be at ……….   Easy,  Mrs Bouquet