Christmas Dinner

[Food Lady]

My family isn't at all consistent about any kind of holiday tradition, so I am curious about your traditions. For those of you who are consistent in what you serve, what exactly do you serve? Do you have turkey dinner deja vu? Do you have ham or pork roast or game hens or Beef Wellington or roast beast? What do you have on the side? Do you drink? Is it wine or cocktails at your house, or both? What's for dessert? Come on now, describe the feast!

[Seshat]

I don't have a tradition anymore, but I can tell you about my family's traditions when I was a kid.
Important note: we're Australian. Christmas is HOT, midsummer hot. Noone wants a heavy winter meal.

We'd go to my Nan's place, and make up this great buffet meal.
Plates of cold turkey slices, ham, roast beef, chicken, all arranged nicely, perhaps with a small bowl with relish or horseradish in the middle.
A basket with bread rolls of various sorts.
Salads. Green salad (lettuce, tomato, carrot, cucumber, a vinegar/oil dressing). Potato salad. Pasta salad. Every family had one or two signature salads.
My mother got this book of salads one year, and after that there was always at least one completely new salad from the book, at the Christmas table.
Maybe one roast, but usually all the meats were cold. If fresh-roasted by us, it would have been done on Christmas Eve (or even the day before), usually at night so the kitchen wasn't miserably hot.
Gravies and relishes and dressings and little bowls of nuts and other condiments and accessories were also available.

Then the savoury stuff would be cleared away (and my Dad would chivvy one or two of the kids to help him rinse dishes while the rest of us kids would be bringing out the sweets).

Cakes and trifles and home made biscuits and rum balls and home-made sweets and slices. It varied every year, except that either Auntie Julie or Mum always made rum balls. (No cooking needed, easy, and very popular with the adults.)

And there was always a Christmas Pudding, complete with ritual. We'd sit down together for that, around the table no matter how hard it was to squeeze everyone in, even if some were standing 'around the table'. And eat a slice of pudding, with custard. And someone would get the coin. Usually one of the children, inevitably one who didn't get it last year.

Present time was often after the big meal, to delay us kids from wanting to run straight to the canal and go swimming. (Nan lived on a canal estate: when my Granddad divorced her, he built her home for her. The site was one of his developments. I used to go yabbying at what's now the Gold Coast Arts Centre.)

[Kiwi]

We do christmas on a 3 year rotation
1 year bf's family
1 year my family
1 year blissfully alone!

The BF's family year I usually do a small ham and cranberry sauce to take to his perants house (his mom does a turkey) and they do a Danish christmas. Kreena, komafect (butchering the spelling) red cabbage, rice pudding with almonds then turkey, gravy, mashed potato, candied yams, dry bread stuffing and brussel sprouts. They also do a prime rib for New Years

My family usually go to a resturant thank god.

I make a ginger ham, gravy, cranberry sauce, roasted carrots and potatos, asparagus, candied yams, and pavlova for dessert.

[AccountingDrone]

We vary it. Back when my Mom was still able to cook it tended to be either the classic turkey dinner or the classic ham dinner. About 15 years ago Rob and I took over the cooking, though dinner is always at my parents house. They have a nice kitchen setup =)

We have been rotating the menu, ranging from the classic ham or turkey, one year we did a crown roast of lamb, classic Dickens goose dinner, we did an Easter-like roast leg of lamb, this year is guinea fowl with wild rice, the variety is nice =)

Rob and I are early risers, so we make the mise en place for breakfast omelets by dicing ham, onions, tomatoes, precooked potato, shredding cheddar and swiss and getting a loaf of sweetbread, a loaf of potato bread and some cinnamon buns in the oven. We tend to then get a batch of onions going for french onion soup for a lunch buffet that adds a couple pounds of chilled shrimp with cocktail sauce, a couple different loaves of bread, a large plate of cut veggies, one of cut fruit, and one of cheese and meat slices that is set up for random grazing and visits from people. We make a half gallon of glogg, and a wine punch, and have assorted cans of soda and a couple different juices ready as well. Formal dinner is actually on table fairly late for the US, around 9 at night.

The scheduling and way we sort of stretch the eating of the day out is a reflection of when I still lived in area, and Danny had a wife and an ex wife, and 2 sets of kids, and I had a BF, so we were balancing visiting and visits from a bunch of different family units. We did some presents the night before, and some the morning of, and there was always gifting going on most of the day with various people dropping in.

[ngc_7331]

For my family, Christmas won't come until January. Mom's a truck driver and my little bro's back home in Maryland and since it's wicked expensive to fly around Christmas (not to mention he works in retail so the odds of him getting the week off are about nil), we wait until things quiet down to celebrate.

Since I'm in central Florida and it's usually pretty warm in January, our Christmas lunch/dinner is a big old cookout. Burgers, steak, chicken, hot dogs, whatever we want. Mom's driving partner will cook on the grill and me and mom will do all the side dishes, veggies, fries/baked potatoes, and dessert. My Christmas Day will be spent at a friend's parent's house, who invite me over for just about every holiday and lasagna night, feasting hopefully on her dad's deep fried turkey, followed by a train trip out to Tampa to spend the rest of the holiday with another friend's family. It's nice to be loved by so many awesome people.

[Sarlon]

winters in florida weren't really cold but sometimes we went to my grandparents house in Maine.

Up at the crack of dawn to open presents, then left to our own devices till about 2 when we'd have prime rib, green bean cassarole, waldorf salad, 5 cup salad, and rolls.

if we were hungry later then was left overs but dinner tended to be a lighter fare.

[dragon_wings]

For Christmas at my house when growing up we'd have the traditionally ham or turkey (don't remember which at the moment) on Christmas Eve before going to church. Then on Christmas morning my mom would pop some cinnamon rolls and/or pigs in a blanket in the oven for breakfast. Lunch would be leftovers and for dinner my mom would make her homemade pizza. Her reasoning was she didn't wanna slave away in the kitchen on Christmas Day so the easy stuff was made that day and big meal was made and consumed on Christmas Eve.

[Food Lady]

For those who do ham: do you have the same sides as for a turkey dinner? I'm reading on blogs about pigs in blankets. I never knew that was a Christmas thing. I don't think I've ever had it.

[dragon_wings]

Yeah, we had the same sides.
As to the pigs in blankets my mom used to always get one specific brand of yummy rolls that did yeast rolls, cinnamon rolls, and the pigs in a blanket. (asking my mom cause I can't remember... I'll post when she texts back) It was an easy and yummy breakfast for Christmas mornings.

ETA: the brand of rolls is Sister Schuberts. yummy.

[firecat88]

Christmas at my house always means one thing: Hallacas!!!!!! This year, it's *my* turn to help make 'em, which I've never really done before, so I'm kinda excited. Aside from that, we usually just do a smaller version of Thanksgiving dinner.

[NorthernZel]

In our family we always have duck roast and pork crackling, with boiled potatoes and caramel potatoes on the side. The adults have a bottle of wine, the kids usually get a dark, non-alcoholic malt beer called "Elf Beer". (Though Lil Zel doesn't like carbonated drinks, so he gets either milk or juice)

For dessert, we get a dish called "Rice A La Mande", which basically is a cold rice porridge mixed with whipped cream, vanilla, chopped almonds and served with a hot cherry sauce.
There is a game involved: A whole almond is usually mixed in the bowl, and the one that gets the almond wins a small prize/gift. Kinda like the "penny in the pudding" game known in the UK.

[FormerCallingCardRep]

Our big tradition is Christmas Breakfast.

I make pancakes, sausage, bacon, eggs, biscuits, home made sausage gravy and french toast. We have this with orange juice, chocolate milk and hot tea.

We eat breakfast before we open presents.

[MoonCat]

When we were kids, we would have ham for Christmas dinner. Don't really remember the sides, probably mashed potatoes and corn or other veggies. We had to eat early because in the afternoon we would go over to my grandparents' house (my father's parents) and eat again over there. There were always Christmas cookies for dessert. My aunt still likes to tell about the Christmas when she & grandma spent all day baking over a dozen different varieties of cookies.

Now we just pick something we really like. Sometimes it's ham, sometimes it's strip steaks. With meat, we serve roasted veggies and mashed, scalloped or au gratin potatoes. Other times, we made a big pan of lasagna. We don't always make cookies anymore, but sometimes my sister and I will make a Yule log cake.

We bake a chocolate cake in a pan that's shaped like a log sliced lengthwise, frost it in chocolate frosting, and then I make it look like bark by running a fork in wavy lines over the frosting. I sprinkle powdered sugar over it to look like snow. We put a row of candles on the cake, and decorate it with real holly leaves, or with candy leaves & berries.

[BookstoreEscapee]

We have breakfast at my parents' house...pancakes or homemade waffles, bacon, eggs if anyone wants them, cinnamon rolls. Then we do presents.

Dinner used to rotate more, but the last several years at least it's been at my uncle's house. Always turkey and all the trimmings.

[fireheart]

One tradition my family does is Christmas Ham. We usually do cold meats for lunch, although on occasion we'll have hot meat as well.

The last time my family did Christmas at my house (we usually alternate between either our place, my distant aunt's place, my close aunt's place or my grandparents and since I started dating my boyfriend, I've done Christmas with HIS family), we did cold ham, turkey, lamb, beef and I think chicken. At the time, we'd just picked up our cat from the breeder (he was around 10 weeks on Christmas) and he was mewing at mum's feet for food. So she gave him a little bit of each of the meats on the table and put it on the floor for him to munch on.