An Apollo 8 Christmas Dinner Surprise: Turkey and Gravy Make Space History

On Christmas Day in 1968, the three-man Apollo 8 team of Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders discovered a surprise in their food locker: a specifically jam-packed Christmas supper covered in foil and embellished with red and green ribbons. Something as easy as a “home-cooked meal,” or as close as NASA might get for a spaceflight at the time, considerably enhanced the team’s spirits and cravings. The meal marked a turning point in area food history.

On their method to the Moon, the Apollo 8 team was not really starving. Food researcher Malcolm Smith later on recorded simply how little the team consumed. Borman consumed the least of the 3, consuming just 881 calories on day 2, which worried flight cosmetic surgeon Chuck Berry. The majority of the food, Borman later on discussed, was “unappetizing.” The team consumed few of the compressed, bite-sized products, and when they rehydrated their meals, the food handled the taste of their wrappings rather of the real food in the container. “If that does not seem like a rousing recommendation, it isn’t,” he informed audiences enjoying the Apollo 8 team in area ahead of their surprise meal. As Anders showed to the tv audience how the astronauts prepared a meal and consumed in area, Borman revealed his desire, that folks back in the world would “have much better Christmas suppers” than the one the flight team would be taking in that day.¹

Over the 1960s, there were numerous problems about the food from astronauts and others operating at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now NASA’s Johnson Space Center). After examining the food that the Apollo 8 team would be taking in onboard their approaching flight, Apollo 9 astronaut Jim McDivitt penciled a note to the food laboratory about his in-flight choices. Utilizing the back of the Apollo 8 team menu, he directed them to reduce the variety of compressed bite-sized products “to a bare minimum” and to consist of more meat and potato products. “I get extremely starving,” he composed, “and I’m scared I’m going to starve to death on that menu.”²