The delicious aroma of roasted chestnuts is a beloved fixture of the holiday season, drifting through winter air and signaling warmth, comfort, and celebration. Long valued in many cultures, chestnuts have been used in both sweet and savory dishes for centuries, prized for their gentle sweetness and creamy texture rather than the oily richness of most nuts.

In Victorian London, chestnuts occupied a curious place in street-food culture. Regular costermongers rarely dealt in oranges and chestnuts; instead, these were sold by a smaller group of specialty vendors offering oranges, roasted chestnuts, and walnuts. Despite their popularity, these sellers were grouped with watercress-women, sprat-women (who sold foraged fish), and winkle-dealers (sea snails), and were considered socially beneath the typical costermonger—a reminder of the era’s strict market hierarchies.

Behind the scenes of this winter tradition stands the chestnut tree itself, a long-lived and generous presence in European landscapes. Sweet chestnut trees (Castanea sativa) can live for hundreds of years, producing glossy brown nuts each autumn that have sustained both people and animals through lean seasons. In many regions, chestnuts were once known as “bread of the poor,” ground into flour when wheat was scarce.

Today, chestnuts are treated as seasonal delicacies, turning up in creamy soups, festive stuffings, pies, and cakes. Candied chestnuts are sold as the French marrons glacés or the Turkish kestane şekeri (“sugared chestnuts”), while puréed chestnuts folded with sugar and whipped cream form the elegant French dessert Mont Blanc. Whether roasting over an open fire or transformed into holiday sweets, chestnuts remain one of winter’s most enduring and comforting flavors.

And speaking of chestnuts and their tribute tartan, they also have been immortalized in "The Christmas Song", better known by its opening line -
"chestnuts roasting on an open fire", one of the most enduring Christmas songs of the 20th century!

The song was written in 1945 by Mel Tormé and Bob Wells during a sweltering summer in Los Angeles. Wells reportedly jotted down cozy winter images—chestnuts roasting, Jack Frost nipping, carols being sung—as a way to mentally cool off, and Tormé quickly set those images to music. What began as a simple evocation of winter comfort soon became a holiday classic.

Although several artists recorded early versions, it was Nat King Cole who cemented the song’s place in Christmas history. His smooth, intimate 1946 recording (and later re-recordings in the 1950s and 1960s) defined the song’s warm, nostalgic tone and helped turn it into a seasonal staple. 🤎 💛 💚 ❤️ 🌰 🌰 🌰