What do you eat on Christmas Eve?

[TinkyDinks]

I really want to have a meal which becomes our traditional Christmas Eve dinner. I don't really want anything too "meat and veggie" cause of the big Christmas Dinner. Nothing too spicy either as 3 young children who aren't keen.

We normally go to church for an hour ish at about 4pm and stop at pub on way home, just for one.

Really want a "go to" for Christmas Eve meal. What do you have?

What's posh bread and butter?

Posh bread was a store bakery loaf instead of the usual Mighty White. Posh butter was salted block of butter in a butter dish, instead of the usual marg!

Gosh, we love our food but I'm a bit at all these elaborate meals on Christmas eve. I'm obviously out of step and need to buck my ideas up!

Anglo-Irish RC family here and we never eat meat on Christmas eve; in fact we always have something extremely simple like leak and potato soup or fish or even a humble cheese roll! Apart from anything else we always have huge amounts of food prep going on for next day so barely have time to eat! I certainly wouldn't have time to cook a full blown roast and do all the clearing up afterwards. We are normally up at 5am the next morning to put the turkey on as it is! How do you all do it!?

Some family members have had smoked salmon on soda bread in recent years, or prawns/sea food with salad though, and I like the idea of kedgeree, might steal that!

Thai king prawn soup sounds good too!

M&S party food, especially the brie and cranberry parcels and mini burgers. We also have crackers and cheese all washed down with Shloer and Fentiman's Ginger Beer at DH's request.
I also make The Hairy Bikers Mud Pie. DS also has this for dessert on Christmas Day as he doesn't like Trifle.

Growing up it was always a takeaway curry.
Last year we had fish and chips, the year before I did the Nigella ginger ham with dauphinoise potatoes and veg.
This year I quite fancy a cheeseboard, lots of cold meats, salad bits and a stand pie, (plus cheese and onion rolls for veggie). We're having a few friends and family round for prosecco after church so that might be the way to go... Chunks of cheddar, ham, cucumber, red pepper and sausage rolls for the kids...

Lobster Thermidor, chips and champagne. Delicious but quite quick & straightforward.

If it wasn't for DH I'd poach a small salmon. Might anyway and give him steak.

Fish and chips with champagne

Christmas eve is always our family traditional maple,ginger ,soy roast ham with some sort of potato side and veg.

We do a buffet style meal (what we now call a "platter" as it has evolved into our "Sunday Roast" alternative, although less special on a weekly basis).

Sliced meats, things like salamis, parma ham (Lidl do a great one), Braseola etc. Maybe some spiced beef or cooked chicken as well.
Often there's some smoked salmon and brown bread, and prawns with seafood sauce, and squid rings.

A plate of veggies - carrot sticks, pepper sticks, sugar snap peas, baby plum tomatoes etc.

Dips - hummus, guacamole, salsa, sour cream and chive etc.
Cheese board (we start it Christmas Eve and continue all the way through Christmas, so decent sized pieces of at least 1 creamy, 1 hard and 1 blue cheese, and probably another 2/3 as well, lots of grapes and a mixture of crackers).
Breadsticks

A nice glass of wine for DH and I, DD makes fizzy squash with sparking water.

Basically, lots of nice things to graze on, with some goodness in there, and mostly in the savoury end of things. If there is a desert, it's usually something like cookies or a chocolate pot or similarly small things.

As children we used to go to church around 4 ish and then all the neighbours used to come around ours, it was being a plate and we are whatever.
As the years went on we didn't go to church ( as it was a christingle aimed at children) but the neighbours still came to ours . My dad would make a curry and my mum made a lasagne . Other people would bring various other bits of food( and lots of drink!!).
It was great and when I had ds 1 and my parents stopped doing Christmas Eve .
I have now moved to Australia ( dh , me, ds 1(13) and ds(11). We are good friends with another family and we take it in turns to host . We have BBQ ( and an awful amount to drink!!!). Last year we had Christmas Eve on the 23rd as friend is a police officer that had to work Christmas Eve!!

We always have take away, it's a tradition DH and I started before DCs.

We always put a blanket on the living room floor and have an indoor picnic with paper plates and party hats. We have simple easy finger food like cocktail sausages, sausage rolls, cheese, cucumber. Carrott sticks, pizza ect. Always have ice cream for pudding.

Gammon ham, jacket pots, salads.

Sherry Trifle.

Much nicer than Christmas Day.

I have my parents, siblings and their children on Xmas Eve so there are normally a lot of us. Last year we did a big ham during the day and had it with salads, cheese, French stick and a huge bowl of homemade coleslaw.

Planning similar this year but also going to buy a couple of yummy desserts from the Sainsburys Xmas Food catalogue. All of this will be accompanied by board games and as DD will be the youngest child here, everyone will get involved with helping her get ready for the visit from Father Xmas. Lovely!!