Christmas Eve Food Traditions

[NigellaEllaElla]

Hi All,

We always go to the Crib Service late afternoon on Christmas Eve and then come home watch Santa do a fly over and then eat dinner. I have 4 young children and want to have a dish that is our Christmas Eve dinner tradition every year.

So I'm being nosy, what do you all eat on Christmas Eve for dinner?

We have pork of some variety, loin steak or sausages with mash usually. We have a European friends that have pork as Christmas Eve is when they celebrate, so we've just adopted the tradition.

Fish Pie.
Or, last year, an enormous hot glazed gammon.

As it is just us, we have a big meal Christmas Eve, then 'Boxing Day Tea' on Christmas Day (ie the fanciest Buffet we can afford, grazing all day, so I don't miss a second of Gift opening etc).
On Boxing Day we have our big Christmas Dinner.

As the kids get older, I might swap the timings around to more traditional ones.

Crib service at 4pm.. usually followed by mulled wine and mince pies so we dont' get home until later so we try and eat at lunchtime. Ham and mash in our house... Nigella's Coke ham of course, with Mash and whatever green stuff is available. I make the ham the day before so it's easy and if peeps are hungry fried egg can be added. We toyed with the idea of having chips with it last year but stuck with mash. Might try champ....

I make my special Christmas eve mini pasties - sweet potato, ginger and green bean. I make a huuuuge batch of them every Christmas Eve and we have some of them hot for tea and the rest cold over the next few days with cheese, crackers, leftover nut roast etc.

We usually have a side of salmon with cous cous or rice. It still feels like a special meal, but light enough to prepare us for the following two days of heavy meals!

We go out for pizza

Salt cod with roat potatoes, green beans and carrots here as DH is from abroad and that is when they celebrate so in effect we have 2 Christmas dinners, we may have mussels as a starter. DS has fishcake as he prefers and inexplicably he prefers uncooked carrots.

I love the idea of Christmas pasties 😋

Ours is crispy duck in pancakes:)