After the fanfare and drama of Thanksgiving dinner, we feel like Christmas and Hanukkah meals with the family can be slightly more relaxed affairs. At least in terms of the food! There are traditional dishes, to be sure, but we find there’s also a lot more room to play around. What will be on your holiday table this year?
My family takes a very non-traditional approach to Christmas. For one thing, we celebrate on Christmas Eve starting with a big family dinner and ending with The Opening of the Presents. (Stockings get saved for Christmas morning!) The dinner itself, while it might not look very traditional to most people, follows a very set routine in our family.
My dad wakes up before anyone else on Christmas Eve, takes out our biggest pot, and starts working on a batch of chili. Some years, he does regular chile con carne, other years he does a chile verde. One very memorable Christmas, he made a venison chili that so gamy that none of us could finish a bowl. But for always and ever, I will associate chili with Christmas.
When the rest of us get up, preparations for dinner rolls, macaroni and cheese, and salads get underway. And cookies. Always several kinds of cookies. Cookie preparations have actually been going on for several days at this point, and Christmas Eve is for finishing touches.
By the time we sit down to eat, we’ve all been working in the kitchen together for several hours. We’re hungry and happy and ready to dig in.
How does your family celebrate the holiday?
Related: What Was Your Worst Holiday Kitchen Disaster?
(Image: Flickr member Fisherga licensed under Creative Commons)
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We have ham, with all the side dishes from Thanksgiving.
I'd like to try goose one year. Anyone have goose for Xmas?
We don't really celebrate Christmas per se, but we do have tacos every year on Christmas Day :)
Christmas Eve growing up was always dinner at my grandmother's or aunt's house. We'd order a few sheet pizzas from the local place (one with pepperoni, which came out crispy and spicy and awesome, and one white pizza with extra garlic and onions) and someone would make a huge Greek salad with lots of feta and olives and onions. Lots of cookies for dessert, and then lots of presents from the extended family. Best culinary memory I have :)
We always have chili verde for Christmas Eve for a very relaxed meal around the television, watching a Christmas movie.
Our Christmas Day dinner varies -some years we have ham, some roast. This year my dad is making an old fashioned English Christmas dinner complete with a pudding that he started a month ago!
Our holiday dinner is always on Christmas Eve. Traditional dishes include beef tenderloin and scalloped oysters. My sister always makes dozens upon dozens of cookies and other treats for the family and to share with friends.
queen of the fall-I'm planning on making goose this year! Can't wait.
Ever since we've started having less extended family over on Christmas Day and focusing more on our little unit, my mom has been getting so creative! Last year it was chestnut and fig stuffed cornish hens with lots of sides and at least one pie. The cookies, though, oh the cookies... It's always been a near month long affair making standard gingerbread and sugar cookies then spicing it up with whatever new recipe catches our eye!
I LOVE it!!
On Christmas Eve (our big meal), we are having a rack of pork, pepin potatoes, and I haven't decided what else yet. Christmas day is usually some sort of chili or stew--haven't decided that yet either. We've hosting our second party this Sunday--after that I will finish up the Christmas food plans.
Prime rib, yorkshire pudding and apple pie are Christmas Day standards. The side dishes vary. For Christmas Eve this year, I am going to make Ina Garten's Italian Wedding soup, warm baguettes, and something chocolate to finish. Spoon cookies, chocolate almond toffee, cut-out cookies, and a new cookie I haven't decided on yet...
We usually do something very simple on Christmas Eve, then go all out Christmas Day. Dinner is almost always a huge beef tenderloin cooked on our Webber grille. Delicious. I always look the most forward to Easter, though: Webbered leg of lamb studded with garlic.
Christmas Eve, we head over to my aunt's and have a traditional Slovakian dinner. It's probably a little more Polish than Slovakian but delicious nonetheless! Three kinds of perogies (everyone but my aunt skips over the ones filled with prunes), babulki (sp?), kolbasa, mushroom soup, and lots of sauerkraut! We eat while the aunts and uncles tell the same stories about going to Catholic school as kids together and having their wrists slapped by nuns and then we all open gifts! My favorite night of the year!
We usually re-do Thanksgiving food on Christmas, because it gives us a good excuse to eat all that yummy food more than once a year.
That's funny, my family does the reverse--our big celebration is on Christmas Eve, but we do stockings at night and presents in the morning. My mom claims that doing stockings helped take the edge off of our excitement as kids so we'd sleep.
We usually have something unusual on Christmas Eve--the last few years it's been Cream of Crab soup. Then we go to my in-laws' on Christmas day and they make meatballs over noodles and sauerkraut. Last year, my husband's grandfather said it "isn't Christmas without sauerkraut." If you say so!
My family does bagels for breakfast, then packs sandwiches for an all-day movie fest in the theater where we consume heroic amounts of popcorn and diet coke. It's naughty, but it's christmas to me. great post!
When I was a kid, the big extended family she-bang was on Xmas Eve, and featured lots of seafood (oysters and shrimp always). Now that we do our own little Xmas, the new tradition that is evolving involves spaghetti! With tomato sauce, a green salad, Parker House rolls, and cookies. The Parker House rolls mean it's Xmas to me. This year I'm taking the little one to a matinee, and it's the kind of meal my husband can throw together while we're out, and it's red and green to boot.
After the presents and lounging in our pajamas for most of the day, we have made a tradition of going to see a movie and then bringing home Chinese take out on Christmas. My kids say it's their favorite tradition of the year!
are you kidding me? more relaxed affairs? i'm polish - christmas eve supper is THE traditional meal of the year - 12 spectacular courses of vegetarian (it's the catholic fasting thing) goodness. after which, back when we used to do presents, we'd open those up by the twinkling lights of the tree, then several glasses of wine and several tonnes of cookies. it's fun and warm and lovely, but relaxed? i think not. if you ordered pizza for christmas eve supper, the polish government would officially excommunicate you...or at least they should.
Christmas Eve is our traditional meal. The plate is full of TAN colored food - pork, sauerkraut, garlic beans, baked potatoes, dinner roll. We will add some color with cranberries! Of course we have lots of cookies for dessert. Christmas morning, we will take a break for cookies or breakfast pasties. My husband and I head back to our home and have people over for appetizers/snacks and drinks at night.
It depends on which side of the family we are spending it with but growing up, we've always had Italian sausage and coldcuts (prosciutto, pancetta, etc.) on Christmas Eve. Luckily,this year we'll be at my mom's house so we'll be eating that. If we are at my in-laws, it is fondue on Christmas Eve and sauerbraten on Christmas Day.
My husband and I are just now starting to establish our own traditions so Christmas morning will be creme brulee french toast made with pannetone and dinner will be lamb chops with whatever sides look good at the farmer's market.
It's traditional in my family to have oyster stew on christmas eve (no idea where that traditon comes from but it's been that way forever), and then turkey (sometimes ham) for a big Christmas day dinner. But Christmas morning is really where it's at - my mom always makes the best maple walnut sticky rolls, mmm....
Christmas Eve = Chinese Take Out! A nice tradition we started years and years ago (20+), we eat and play board games and put the last minute ornaments on the tree. Leftovers are good to snack on while wrapping presents late night!
Christmas morning is yummy french toast, pork sausage and veggie sausage, hot and fresh cranberry/apple/pear chutney followed by stockings and presents!
@angeladudek - We have prime rib and yorkshire pudding for xmas too! Instead of apple pie, we have plum pudding. It's definitely my favorite meal of the year.
Growing up, and continuing the tradition, we always have chili on Christmas Eve and for Christmas day we keep it beyond simple by picking up caught-that-morning Dungeness crab... we just make a delicious salad (mom got the recipe from Seattle's Canlis restaurant at least 20 years ago) and dessert! (For New Years Eve we always do fondue =)
My husband and I started a new Christmas tradition in our home. He's a long-time vegetarian, so the roasted-bird dinner just didn't cut it.
For our first Christmas together, I made a pot of cheese fondue and served it with lots of delicious things to dip: homebaked bread; cubes of roasted potatoes, sweet potatoes, and roasted squash; blanched broccoli and green beans; halved cherry tomatoes; apple chunks and grapes. We loved it so much that it became our traditional Christmas dinner.
So every Christmas, after we return from the bustle of our big families, the two of us dim the lights, light the fondue, and sit close together on cushions on the floor around our coffee table, dipping into the fondue and drinking beer or wine, sharing smooches between bites of fondue. It's our own tradition, and it's even more special because we built it ourselves.
Wow such awesome traditions!
My In-laws passed on their tradition of a traditional scandinavian smorgie on christmas eve. We do that with swedish meatballs, kropkakkors, cheeses and breads, mac n cheese, etc.
Christmas dinner is usually prime rib with yorkies, but this year we are mixing it up and having ham with popovers instead... sometimes you have to have a little change!
We always do a traditional breakfast brunch with the grandparents at their house...
any other smorgie lovers out there?
My family always had a big dinner on Christmas eve, always totally different each year but often involving a ham or lamb and lots of cookies. Christmas morning is all about leftover cookies and pannetone. For lunch on any day after a fancy dinner, though, I like to make scrambled eggs with flat champagne beat into them. Set aside a glass of champagne the night before and it makes the greatest scrambled eggs ever.
Sidenote, I'm really loving reading about how others have melded together holidays with their partner's families. My boyfriend and I have been trying to come up with a solution for a couple years now and so far we've had no luck convincing either of our families to change the tradition.
When I was a kid, we used to throw huge Christmas eve parties with a bunch of hors d'oeuvres type stuff and big vats of lentil and potato leek soups. Now that my parents have split and it's just me, my mom, and my sister on Christmas eve, we still do hors d'oeuvres for dinner- usually shrimp cocktail, pigs in blankets, bruchetta, and some cheeseboards/charcuterie. This year my mom wants to add fondue, which I am all for!
Christmas day we always have Pilsbury Grands cinnamon buns for brunch, and then usually something like filet mignon or steaky in the evening. However this year my sister and I both missed Thanksgiving so we are having Thanksgiving on Christmas!
My family has always done a Thanksgiving-type spread on Xmas (though I do remember a ham one year). This year, well, things have been very difficult for us (heart surgery for my mother, father now in a nursing home, lots of health problems and job problems for my sister and me) and nobody really wants to do the traditional thing. I'm going to host it at my house for the first time and I'm planning on making beef wellington, garlic mashed potatoes, and some other sides. Dessert will be the sticky toffee pudding I made last year to good reviews.
My family (and that of the SO) do the traditional turkey and all the fixings type dinners. The only differences are: sea-foam salad with mine, turnip casserole with his. Red wine vinagrette dressing with his, catolina and other bottled dressings with mine. Deserts vary from year to year.
This year it's just me and the SO on the 25th, so I'm going to try a raspberry hosin pork loin with home fries and Cesar salad. Dessert will be fresh baked cookies!
We have red and green dinner (generally pasta with marinara and pesto sauces) on Christmas Eve. On Christmas day, we host the local extended family for dinner and my mom makes spinach crepes as the main dish, with mashed potatoes, green beans, and other standard "big dinner" stuff. We also have a family friend who makes croissants from scratch... she is now invited to all holidays. :)
Being English, Christmas day is turkey time with my family. We do sprouts, roast potatoes and parsnips, stuffing, carrots - the classics. Then out comes the Christmas pud, someone goes foraging in the garden to find some holly to put on top, we douse with brandy and set it alight. Serve with custard.
I'm jonesing to host so I can switch it up and give goose a try, since my husband and I now celebrate Thanksgiving and get the turkey fix in early.
I've had a nice Christmas with an ex in the PNW which involved a glorious cheese fondue and my first beautiful experience of layered dip. I did feel lost without the ritual of a bird and lots of sides, though.
Chirstmas means PASTA for my family. With my Grandma's sauce that cooks for 8 eight hours with Italian sausage and meatballs. Yum! And there is some anipasto of course. We usually eat in Christmas Eve, and Christmas day is left overs (always better the day after!).
I was like 13 before I realized people mostly ate Thanksgiving-type food at Christmas.
Our family tradition started back when I was about 16. There is 10 years between me and my youngest sister. We asked our parents if on Christmas eve, we could open sister presents, then do parent and Santa presents in the morning. It quickly became a tradition. Now that we are all adults, one of my sister's is married to a pastor. We drive down to his church and eat pizza in between the children and 11 PM service and open presents in the santuary under the tree.
Christmas day is usually for extended family and the meal will vary from year to year.
I quite like the idea of roasting a goose this year.
We had a routine of doing my father's family's Christmas on Christmas Eve and my mother's on Christmas day.
However, now that I live with my boyfriend and moved 200 miles away and my parents aren't together any longer, Christmas has become absolutely nuts. Now my time is split between my parents and his family and friends and cousins. Ugh.
I am an only child and growing up we didn't really live near family, so Christmas was generally just my parents and me. I am not sure when we started this tradition, but every year on Christmas Eve, we do a butter and oil fondue with beef tenderloin, shrimp and mushrooms.
It doesn't take much prep work--just chopping the beef and mushrooms and peeling the shrimp, plus melting the butter--and since everything is cooked bite by bite at the table it's a great way to have a nice long meal where you don't feel uncomfortably full at the end.
I am bringing my boyfriend to Christmas dinner for the first time this year and I am really looking forward to sharing this tradition with him. I'm only a LITTLE sad that my mom recently swapped her 1970s avocado green fondue pot for a modern electric model.
Not many antipodeans here? Christmas eve my dad always gets a head start on the ham, and everyone else tends to have something like toast (with ham!) or salad.
Christmas breakfast is ham on toast (dad), and the girls of the family have a huge mango and a plate of cherries apiece, and then as many apricots, peaches, nectarines, plums and grapes as we think we can hold. Then open presents and whatever for an hour or two, until we can go for a swim, then a BBQ and salad lunch. Then another swim.
We used to go for the "traditional" cooked lunch, but when it's the middle of summer it's the last thing you want. On the other hand, after the desserts and nuts and liqueurs finish coming out after lunch, it's almost time for dinner and we haven't left the table - we just clear off one end to play a marathon evening of cards. (or we go for another swim as it cools down) One of these years I'll have to try a traditional white christmas, but until then it's salads and BBQs!