Christmas Day would be better without Christmas dinner

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Presents, nice fizz, nibbles, smoked salmon on brown bread, chocolates, more nice booze, games, family, a walk, cheese board, Christmas telly. That's all that's needed for a great Christmas Day.

Cooking and eating Christmas dinner just takes up too much time and is too much work and leaves you uncomfortably full. AIBU that we should just leave out that part?

[quote ADMum20]@MrsMiaWallis when you par boil the roast potatoes how do you keep them overnight? Presumably not in water?[/quote]
I just leave mine uncovered in a colander! They always absolutely fine and go cold into very hot fat.

Christmas dinner is as complicated as people want to make it. We had a lovely dinner, all the trimmings, the oven did the work whilst we played monopoly. I genuinely don’t get why people find cooking a roast so much work. Maybe I’m cutting more corners than some would want to but it means a stress free day.

We also Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. DH takes the kids out Christmas Eve morning for a walk while I get on top of things. We have our Christmas dinner around 5ish then a Christmas film and bed. On Christmas Day have leftovers and buffet food so much easier being able to spend the day relaxing!

We're having the dinner today instead. We don't like cooking Christmas day

@ADMum20 I parboil the spuds the day before, peeled and chopped, into cold water and then boiled for 4 mins. Then drain and smoosh in the colander and cover in (goose) fat while they're still hot.

Leave to cool and put in fridge overnight. Get out in the morning to soften the fat up a bit and then 60-90 mins in the oven, turning every 20-30 mins. BEST EVER - so much better than doing all on the same day! Overnight in the fat seems to make them like satin inside and so indulgently crispy outside. The only thing I cook that my MIL consistently compliments! :)

We also have Christmas dinner on Christmas Eve. It makes so much sense. My DC are adults now and we’ve done it this way since they were tiny, and they’ve always loved it. For them it spread Christmas over 2 days. For me it means I can properly relax on the day.

I get everything ready made from Aldi/m&s. Is was dead easy. The only thing that was a hassle was the turkey tbh But I was uncomfortably full😂

What are you all doing that Christmas dinner is such a performance? It took an hour to prepare ours yesterday and that was:

Chicken for meat eaters
Salmon for DD
Quorn roast for me
The best roast potatoes ( 3 kinds of garlic)
Roast parsnips and carrots (honey and paprika)
Leeks and broccoli
Pigs in blankets (packet)
Home made stuffing
Yorkshire puddings (from freezer)

An hour is plenty enough time! And it was delicious.

Thanks @WoolyMammoth55 and @MrsMiaWallis .... I’ll do that next year for sure.

Had everything else prepped Christmas Eve (including Cauliflower Cheese) so it was pretty stress free, but that’ll be even one less thing to do on the day.

@ADMum20

Thanks *@WoolyMammoth55 and @MrsMiaWallis* .... I’ll do that next year for sure.

Had everything else prepped Christmas Eve (including Cauliflower Cheese) so it was pretty stress free, but that’ll be even one less thing to do on the day.

I find making roast potatoes quite stressful for some reason so this is a game changer.

I only boil the spuds for 7mins before the go in the oven-& the rest of the veg doesn't take long so I don't think the night before would save anything for us.

Only 4 of us though & all adults who all pitch in.

Except for me yesterday.

My contribution was the washing up!

Oh tell a lie-I microwaved the swede!

I can report back from early findings of my studies into this question. As long as you are not working on Christmas eve (or have help and are working from home) cooking and eating the turkey dinner on Christmas Eve evening without also having presents / church / phonecalls /the whole shebang is much better. Then on Christmas day having been well fed by the main family chef the night before, other family members are much more easily corralled into making cheeseboards, salads, Sliced turkey and ham, yule logs etc. I did find it much less pressured (but obvs also had fewer guests and house visitors) and we have just agreed we will probably do the same next year but not necessarily have a roast at all (but will still cook the meat the night before - mulled wine and turkey sandwiches anyone). However we would miss the cold roast potatoes, roast veg etc for the few days afterwards so might have to factor that in. Lovely not having post sprout indigestion!

We didn’t cook Christmas dinner yesterday and we had a lovely day.
Pancakes for breakfast, champagne and party food for lunch, DS had pizza for tea and we had Salmon Wellington, dauphinoise and veg. Followed by Christmas pudding.
We’re cooking a roast in a couple of days for MIL (in our bubble).

I’ve always thought this, but only because I’m not actually a massive fan of roast dinners generally. Christmas Day is a day where I’m normally hungry by early evening because I don’t eat much lunch. Boxing Day is the best food day in my opinion because it’s snack-y party food pretty much all day long.
But if part of your complaint is that Christmas dinner leaves you uncomfortably full, couldn’t you just not have as much..?

We’ve always kept it fairly simple and don’t have it until around 5, so it’s not a major faff here.

However if I were one of those people who do 2 or more different meats, roast and mashed potatoes, and umpteen different veg/side dishes, I’m sure I’d agree with you.

Er no ta you can do all that stuff any day. The dinner gives the day structure. I prep the veg and turkey the day before, do ready made stuffing, just work out timings and its a piece of piss. I love the tradition of a beautifully laid table, everyone in nice clothes, raising a glass and pulling crackers before tucking in.

I love Christmas lunch and I love cooking it - but I do nearly all of the prep on Christmas Eve so apart from basting the toasties and the frantic last 15 minutes of Gravy, warming dishes etc, cooking the lunch is just putting things in the oven at the right time.

YABVU. How will you eat the left over cold pigs in blankets if there aren’t any?

[quote BackwardsGoing]@Wingingthis I could, happily. Need to convince the rest of the people in my life [/quote]
Convincing the rest of them is easy. You explain that you don’t enjoy Christmas Day because you have to prepare a big meal, and would they like to
A) prepare the meal themselves (and clean up afterwards)
B) not have the big meal on Christmas Day

I prepped on Christmas eve while DH tidied up. Probably spent half an hour actually cooking on the day, taking things out the fridge and putting in oven.

It was an incredible dinner, best roast dinner ever, definitely one if the best parts of dinner. Dont know what we would have done with those two hours if we hadn't eaten dinner, we opened presents with loads of time before cooking even needed to start, played loads of board games, had a nap, zoomed family. There's a big plate of leftover dinner I've been dreaming about all night!

Do whatever will make your Christmas Day go the way you want it to, OP! As pp have said, there are no rules, just do your own thing, start your own family traditions!

This! We didn’t cook one thing Christmas Day other than husband putting in a pizza for our boys (5& 3) for lunch. (Takes 5 min to make). Everything else we bought yesterday, discounted so the only thing we had to do was pop food in the microwave (also bakes) and that was it. Our Christmas dinner was a takeaway curry. Our kids were in bed around 8:15 and we were in bed about 8:45. Most relaxing Christmas we ever had in over a decade. We usually spend it traveling to spend it with family members and this year was the first we ever spent it at home. It was lush.

You made home made stuffing and all that in an hour? It took me an hour to make the breadcrumbs!

Just do what suits you

For me, Christmas Day is all about the dinner so I would never choose to forego it unless there was a very good reason but if you're all happier with a lighter/easier meal then crack on

I'm with you OP and I dont even cook it! My DH cooks so I'm lucky but we lose him for several hours in the kitchen.

The food was lovely though.

When I read threads like this I'm baffled as to why roasts cause me so much faff but they always do.
Yesterday I had vegetables all prepared and ready to go, readymade cauliflower and broccoli cheese, readymade carrot and swede mash, gravy stock pigs in blankets and stuffing were made and frozen weeks ago. I was still in the kitchen for hours. It's always late if I want to eat early or early if I want to eat late.