Timing of Christmas Dinner

[CiderGlider]

I see more and more people moving their Christmas dinner to Christmas Eve and I totally understand the logic. But....I'm not ready to do that-I always host and have dinner at 2pm.

On reflection, I know I'm spending all day in the kitchen and not with my children (aged 9&6). By 5pm I am shattered and just want to flop on the sofa.

I'm thinking of moving it 5pm so I can spend the morning/early afternoon out of the kitchen and with the children. Anyone want to share their experiences of Christmas dinner timings!

Our Christmas meal is eaten between 3 and 4pm and I go to Cook for it all. Delicious, really easy, absolutely no stress. Thoroughly recommend. I don’t particularly like cooking but absolutely love eating.

We usually have ours at about 2/3

12:00 in our house. Kids 3 and 5 will get up on a normal day at 5:30/6, so stockings followed by breakfast, followed by presents from under tree, then dinner at 12:00 - just the four of us and all prepped night before so just ready to pop in oven and on hob. After dinner we head out for a walk round our village then home to play with toys. DH takes the kids to his family for more presents and a late buffet tea.

Do as much prep the day before as poss. Also don't have loads of stuff which is massively complicated.

If you have adults coming over the kitchen being semi open with wine, music and so on creates a nice social atmosphere. Difficult if you have small children who might be in danger from hot ovens etc though.

We have always had Christmas dinner as the evening meal.

We eat about 4. Works well. Though everything is prepped ready on Christmas Eve and I buy foil disposable trays for it all so less washing up 😊
We are still hosting this year & I’ll be 39 weeks pregnant with a nearly two year old and it’s fine. Certainly won’t require all day in the kitchen!

We do all the prep Xmas eve and cook the turkey. Turkeys done at about 10pm and it's turkey sandwiches before bed. Last year we cooked the roast potatoes too.
On Xmas day, the beef and gammon are cooked, and the veg. Heat up the roasties, and then serve. We eat at 3pm.

Last year we had Christmas Dinner at 6pm instead of the usual afternoon and I preferred it later. I'm going to go late again this year.

Doing the cooking was more relaxed as I had all day to do it, Christmas eve is super busy here so little chance for much food prep. We didn't have the mess in the kitchen for most of the day. It was nice and cosy eating when it was dark out with the tree lights and candles twinkling.

Barbarara, I'm similar - really enjoy the 'no cooking' chilled days right after Christmas - lots of lovely leftover turkey and gammon, etc. I might whack some jacket potatoes in the oven, or make a salad or coleslaw, but that's about it - until the last of the turkey, boil up the carcass for turkey stock/stew.

I don't see Chr. dinner as a massive big deal - it's just a glorified roast, but I don't do loads of different veg and 3 kinds of spuds, so prep doesn't take forever either.

I do make stuffing and pigs in blankets in advance and freeze, so they're all ready to go.
Should add that although my dh doesn't cook, so it's usually all down to me, he invariably does all the dishwasher loading/unloading, and clearing up the kitchen. And since I'm a messy cook, that suits me just fine.

I think it would be nice to eat later. I think I need to get ahead a bit more and maybe work a bit faster on the day. My DH does help but rather takes over the kitchen when he’s doing his bits.

Thank you, I’m resolved to be more focused!