To think serving a starter with Christmas dinner is unnecessary. And weird.

[Kavalier]

Am hosting DH's family for Xmas dinner for the first time this year. MIL always does a prawn cocktail starter and they will miss a starter if I don't serve one, so I will. I think it's very odd though. AIBU?

Laughing at vodka margarine.

Riverland the annual MN Christmas trifle thread is always a laugh. People get quite het up over whether to dragee or not dragee.

And insertion of a jelly layer is a rival to the finest AIBU shoes on or off, P&C parking space yes or no.

People feel quite strongly about their trifles.

My mum has always done a prawn cocktail starts with salmon and avocado and lovely crunchy lettuce and seafood sauce. I love it, wouldn't have it any other way!

Never have a starter. I wouldn't eat the main course if we did.

We have afters, in the evening. One course meal here. Plenty of nice stuff to eat in-between if anyone wants.

Breakfast is usually selection box.

No one wants a cooked breakfast and the one year I made lovely breakfast stuff no one ate it.

They can have chocolate, or plenty of the sausage rolls, cookies I made etc.

We normally have mellon for starters,

Not very exciting but makes the occasion more special

At my mums house we have a starter (something like prawn cocktail, smoked salmon, maybe pate) but at my sisters we ace smoked salmon blinis with champagne. Both work well :-)

Both DH and I come from prawn cocktail starter families.

Pp was right, it fills the gap between when the dinners meant to be ready and when it actually is.

However, it is a lot to eat all in one go, so over the years we have migrated to a selection of pates with Melba toast, which is served on the coffee table and everyone just nibbles as much or as little as they like.

It comes out again in the evening, too.

We never have a starter. I don't get the point of them. To me a starter is a light lunch. There again, I hate the whole christmas thing anyway.
However if I was cooking for guests who were used to having starters for christmas dinner then I'd make one, something really easy like prawn cocktail. You can buy it already made anyway, just pour it over some (prepacked) shredded lettuce.

This is yet another area where my MiL is dissatisfied / mortified at my malign influence.

They are prawn cocktailers and we are not. I can't see how you can fit in a proper sized Christmas lunch with multiple styles of potato and bread sauce after a starter. It adds nothing in my opinion to the festive spirit beyond faff.

Of course noone is unreasonable until they go to other people's homes and expect what they haVE at home..

Love my prawn cocktail starter. We also have breakfast, mid morning canapés and champagne and of course mums Christmas pud. Now days cake waits till afternoon tea. Then salad late evening. We don't eat for a week after.

SquattingNeville : I'd be happy with prawn cocktail followed by pudding,trifle and a mince pie! That's any solo Christmas sorted, thanks!

Oh god, my MIL insists on a starter. A rather worthy soup made with turkey stock and root vegetables. It's ok, but I really don't want to take the edge off my appetite because I LOVE Xmas lunch.

Also, she plates up the lunch, then puts it in the oven to keep warm while we all have to faff around with this soup. So you're there, eating a soup you don't want, knowing your dinner is slowly drying out. It's mental torture, not to mention a crime against food.

So, no, definitely no starters in this house. Smoked salmon and eggs for breakfast, but I want to be properly hungry when I sit down to the main event. Kids are obviously full of chocolate but that's their choice!

I love a prawn cocktail

Starters make a meal a bit more special or formal.
I find them a faff but i am lazy and i have small dcs, so keeping them at the table for the main event is hard enough.

Its not weird to have a starter, but its a bit awkward to complain about "missing" one.

This year i think the order of food might be something like:
6am: selection box and santa's leftover brandy
130: christmas lunch
4-5: light tea

Trifle is compulsory boxing day fare.

Btw, I eat my soup and don't say anything, before I'm accused of being abominably rude.

Isn't part of Christmas lunch the delicious excess of it?

My mother always used to serve 6 courses

1 - Antipasto (Cold meats and vegetables in oil/vinegar like peppers/artichokes/mushrooms/olive etc)

2 - Home made ravioli cooked in both (like a pasta soup)- ( In Italy Christmas was not Christmas without these when my mother was young so it was sacrosanct that we had these)

3- Roast Turkey dinner

4 Home made chicken Escalope and salad (originally started because some of the usual 20 people who come for xmas dinner most years didn't like turkey and it continued year after year!)

5 - Home made zabaglione , later this became homemade tiramisu (These desserts were always the favourite and everyone liked them)

6 - Shop bought xmas pudding (after all we were in England and some people, though not all, liked Christmas pudding)

This is what you get when you mix two different countries celebrating Christmas, a cook who loved cooking and couldn't bring herself to not serve at least 3 courses that everyone liked/would eat. You get what is effectively two sets of a 3 course meal. None of us struggled too much to eat it actually, but lunch did usually take 2-3 hours to finish

I loved this as a child but I have to say the work involved was too much for me and my sister so since we have taken over cooking Christmas lunch (my mother is 89 now), the quality and choice of food at Christmas lunch has definitely deteriorated!

The op should do what she wants to on Christmas day and what she believes will work best, she is cooking it.

Smoked salmon and cream cheese blinis in my house on. Christmas Day. It is the law! But I put them out about an hour before lunch with some Prosecco so not technically a starter.

Wow to bumbling's Mum! That would be a wonderful feast to be a guest at.

You had me at the ravioli, but zabaglione too!

Last year, choice of starters, leek, potato and stilton soup and small portion of Lamb keema with mint yoghurt, chutney and nan, both went down very well and had enough to give guests who came later! Yes, it's nice to have a starter.

Here it's champagne breakfast with smoked salmon, scrambled eggs and croissants. Then more champagne and nibbles throughout the morning, then the Christmas main meal at about 2pm, then cake and mince pies at about 5.

Personally I think prawn cocktails are incredibly naff.

I made blinis with salmon last year and the blini mixture kept on growing. I would turn my back on it and it would grow some more. I used buckwheat flour and because it wasn't available where I live some guest brought me some from Romania. They bought it in a plant pharmacy and I think it was made of the wheat equivalent of Jack In the Beanstalks Magic Beans.

At one stage I thought of battering it to death with a stick.

I usually do some cocktail size 'starters' to serve with the bubbly about 45 minutes before the main course is served. Smoked salmon/pate etc. It cuts down on the washing up but leads nicely up to the main event.

6 courses bumbling! That sounds like my kind of Christmas celebration!