Christmas Food Traditions. What are yours?

[Mimi1977]

I love the idea of food traditions and this is my first real Christmas with DD so would love to start some of our own.

Nigella has good ones like making the biscuits for the tree and her Christmas morning muffins sound divine.

We always have some champagne with breakfast but how soon do you start your Christmas food traditions, do you have anything specific on Christmas Eve for a meal?

We always have a fab beef stew and polenta on Christmas eve, an Italian tradition from my nonna

We have "something easy" on Christmas Eve!

And turkey fajitas on Boxing Day.

That's about it for traditions for us, apart from the traditional roast then trifle on the day itself.

My tradition is to make Christmas as painless as possible so I take shortcuts so I don't spend all day cooking (can I mention frozen roast potatoes without offending anyone's sensibilities? )

Croissants, bucks fizz & Roses chocs for breakfast Christmas morning. Traditional turkey dinner with all the trimmings. Boxing Day I always do a cold buffet ham in coke or cider, turkey, cheese board, salad & raspberry trifle & Christmas cake. Bubble & squeak and a kedgeree somewhere between Christmas & New Year.

I go all Bridget Jones' mum and always do canapes on Christmas eve - anything mini: sausages, salmon & cream cheese, caviar on bellinis, samosas etc - and I will bake some mince pies too.

Christmas day this year will be our first with DS (and first in 4 years away from in-laws woo hoo) so extra special for us. Plan to have roast duck and all the trimmings for lunch. Going to buy my Christmas pud but will make a trifle so DS can have some - well, I hope it's ok to give an almost 1 year olf trifle.

brightwell, I read part of your post as Salad and raspberry trifle and did this face > until I realised the salad was separate.

We're deeply traditional when it comes to food - we all love the known-ness of our own particular family foodie traditions.

Christmas Eve lunch - salmon fishcakes and green salad. Chocolate roulade with a robin on the top aka "Yule Log"

Christmas Eve snacky supper - sausage rolls (made and froze them yesterday) mince pies and Cadbury's Heros (the Sneer family Chrimble choc of choice)

Christmas Day breakfast - M+S clementine juice, croissants and pannetone (Coco Pops for youngest child - I never buy them but Father Christmas always brings a box...) and - new for last year but immediately hugely popular - Nigella'a antioxident salad (mango, blueberries and pomegranate)

Christmas Day Lunch - traditional turkey/ pud

Christmas Day supper - turkey sandwiches

Boxing Day lunch - cold turkey, bubble and squeek, baked beans, chutneys and pickles. Trifle.

Some supper after this - turkey curry a la afore-mentioned Bridget Jones' family

Christmas eve is Carp the Czech way, fried in breadcrumbs with potato salad. Huge fish bones, big enough to sew with.

And before that you have to throw the fish scales you have in your purse from last christmas into the river and replace them with scales from this year's fish.

Mad Czech in-laws!

Christmas Eve - something light & easy.
Always prep veg ChrisEve so its not so stressy on ChrisDay.
On the big day always OJ & Bubbly to wake up nicely,light breakfast(croissants).Traditional lunch & picky bits for supper
Love Crimbo!

I always make gingerbread men in secret on Xmas Eve, two 'men' and one 'woman', to attach to the dc's stockings so that they know which is for whom. Of course it wasn't me who made them, it was really FC.

We always have a roast for Xmas lunch, but vary the meat. I will never ever again have a turkey 'crown' - it is freakadelic and I do not like the look of it!

For Xmas lunch pudding, dh likes a home-made trifle. Takes me a few days to make, and is always soaked in sherry. The dc like it, too .

Xmas pudding is eaten on Boxing Day or later. MIL usually gives us a homemade one when we see her, either before Xmas day or between Xmas and New Year, which we always keep for the following year.

Xmas cake is eaten around New Year. I bake it now - eeek! - ice it plain white, and let the dc go wild decorating it themselves.

Mimi, Nigella's Christmas muffins are really yummy and easy - they have become a tradition in our house

Eating way too much of everything and feeling too fat to move is our tradition

Mine are: smoked salmon and buttered brown bread for Christmas lunch, which happens as a follow-on from present opening at 11 with Bucks Fizz (or neat Champagne).

Then any roast meat for Christmas Dinner, served at 8pm, as long as it isn't turkey (and, when my mother was alive, as long as we hadn't had it before. This meant we had to become ingenious as the years went by and caused long discussions from about March onwards).

Since I've spent Xmas with my inlaws for the last several years, the tradition is for me to take over from Boxing Day and create a pie from all the leftovers. This year I am taking over on Christmas Eve and I've already planned menus for 5 days and counting...

PS the orange juice for the Bucks Fizz had to be made from real oranges and the noise from the juicer had to wake the whole house up from about 7am, probably to drown out the noise made by me and my sister opening our stockings.

we have goose on xmas day and the leftovers are used on boxing day as "peking goose". shred cold goose meat, heat some sesame oil in a pan add 2 tbsp of hoisin sauce and 1tbsp soy sauce and heat until bubbling. shred some spring onions and cucumber. spread sauce on a bought tortilla add goose,& veg. Roll and enjoy!.

This xmas have bought dc ikea gingerbread house to assemble on xmas eve to contain the excitement & to use as centrepiece for xmas dinner table

I just do Delia for Christmas day and the obligatory leftovers.

I don't do anything special beforehand. We usually have plenty of seasonal food with the various parties that we go to in December.