What Will Your Family Eat for Christmas Eve Dinner?

We often have take out chinese on x mas eve...depends on what the x mas 'day' obligations are.

Other x mas eves, it has been a nice roast beast!

I just depends.

Pizza has not been unheard of here either!

Relax...enjoy!!

Best!

We have fondue every year. I have no idea why, except that we all like it, it's fun, and nobody has to spend all day in the kitchen to prepare it. Cheese fondue for the meal, chocolate fondue for dessert. Done!

We dont' do anything too fancy for Christmas Eve. It's not a big celebration for us. My inlaws will be here for their yearly visit from North Carolina. I think I'll be making ziti (meatless), chicken marsala, roasted veggies and salad. One of my teens is vegetarian, so I want to serve something that will satisfy her, and something to please the non-vegetarians.

We will be having a feast at Medieval Times--we turned down the invitation from my sister to attend her huge party (she's invited over 80 people to her home), and will do the dinner/tourney with our kids, early bedtime, and a nice quiet evening with my husband and some red wine.

We use to have the worlds best wild mushroom soup and panini sandwiches, with spicy artichoke dip appetizer. Then we got the flu three years ago, and started a tradition of take-out, but we've decided that Chinese take-out is disgusting, and our take out sushi restaurant closes at 2.

This year we are going back to soup and sandwiches, but instead of mushroom (which took all day to make!), I'm making 30 minute minestrone.

I struggled with this too this year. Here's my Christmas Eve dinner:

I am ordering fried chicken and baked chicken from our local gourmet grocer. I am making mashed potatoes, coleslaw, baked bean casserole, ribbon jello and rolls. Now, traditionally, I am also adding our homemade pierogis and fresh kielbasa to the menu. If that doesn't fill them up, they can graze on a cheese and meat tray that I am fixing, plus a fruit and veggie tray with condiments along with some fancy mustards and Panera Bread baked breads.

For dessert:

Betty Crocker Christmas Wreath cake (absolutely beautiful and easy to make, check it out online)

Marie Callender's pumpkin pie

Fine chocolates on the side too!

I hope this helps you:)

Merry Christmas:)

We have had tamales in the past. They are traditional in Mexico and we know lots of people who make them from scratch. (I don't make them, though).

Another thing we often have is crab. No cooking involved and it is the best part of the crab season. However we live on the west coast so it is very fresh.

Since my childhood it has always been taco's. I am from a military family with 5 kids, my parents never had time to make a big dinner then, plus we went to chuch. So we do that now even with our family - at my parents house.

We do a huge family dinner on Christmas Day...no need to do it twice in a row, right?

We just have lots of appetizers, and enjoy the night!

We are italion so christmas eve is bigger than x mass day food wise for us. We have a feast of the fishes. We do baked stuffed shrimp, lobster, stuffed clams, scallops and tons and tons of desserts all the italion cookies. We have lost 2 huge family members in the past 2 yrs and my mom is recovering from cancer. But we are still keeping the tradition going. Which has been in my family since before I was born. It is beyond hard at the holidays for us to have all of this and missing our loved ones. If your family likes fish its sooooo easy. You can pre order the shrimp cleaned and de vained. Mix ritz crackers into breadcrumbs and mix with melted butter. Stuff shrimp and bake. Serve with a rice pilaf and salad. Or do a nice roast like a prime rib. Merry christmas!

Growing up we always ordered pizza for Christmas Eve dinner. The adults knew they'd be cooking a lot the next day, so it was a treat for them as well as the kids. Now that all the kids are grown, most of us switch between our families and our spouse's families on Christmas Eve and Christmas, so it's two big fancy meals in two days. I miss the pizza...

I used to do a big meal for Christmas Eve, and it was whatever we did not have at Thanksgiving (if we had honeybaked ham for Thanksgiving, then a turkey for Christmas, or vice-versa). But with the kids and all the activities on Christmas Eve (squeeeeeezing the last drops of Christmas fun to the very last second!) we stick with a tried and true favorite that is super easy and is even better if made the day before: gumbo. Since we do chicken and sausage gumbo all year round, I do seafood gumbo for Christmas Eve, but still, it's delicious and easy to eat and doesn't eat too much time out of a very busy day. Basically, the gumbo is usually done the day before and I just make a large pot of rice the day of. It's a wonderful dinner, and everyone is all too happy to eat leftovers on Christmas day for lunch. Then we'll have festive appetizers around for when friends come by (we open gifts from family/friends on Christmas Eve and from Santa on Christmas day). Gumbo is something that can easily be shared if someone comes by while we're eating, and it's something we usually eat early because we go to church in the evening, so some appetizers and wassail are nice to have on hand after church when we're visiting, opening gifts, etc.

On Christmas day, I've always done orange cinnamon rolls but am trying a breakfast casserole in the slow cooker this year "just to see". That, then leftover gumbo for lunch, I'm totally free to take the day off to enjoy Christmas. For dinner Christmas night, I'm making a beef tenderloin, roasted potatoes and veggies, a blueberry pie for the kids and mince pie for husband and I.

We typically have prime rib or roasted tenderloin. We love both and whichever we don't have on Christmas Eve, we'll have New Years!

For prime rib, I get it special cut from my butcher and I slow roast it with my thermometer until it is about rare. Then I put heat on 450 to get the outside crunchy. We like ours medium rare to rare to I watch it carefully. It's way too expensive to mess up at $20/#!!!

I serve mashed potatoes and au juis, and a green veggie.

For tenderloin, another pricey piece of meat at $27/# typically at my butcher, I slow roast until rare and serve a Demi glacé with it along with mashed potatoes and green veggie.

The meats I purchase are prime and from the same places the high end restaurants purchase from and sell for huge $$.

I'm sure you could find a choice cut that might be more economical.

We also have veggie, fruit, and cheese trays along with appetizers.

Enjoy and Merry Christmas

Your Christmas Day is what we do on Christmas Eve & Christmas Day. I have moved away from the "sit down" meal to more of a relaxed and grazing type meal and I love it

we do pizza early(like 4ish) so we can get ourselves degreased and get dressed for 5:30 mass - when the kids are older we'll do midnight mass and maybe a "better" dinner.

We will have a cheese and fruit platter, maybe with a few hot nibbles such as spring rolls with dipping sauce. We will have some mince pies, shortbread and rum balls for dessert.

Pizza is our Christmas Eve dinner. :)

Christmas Day we have ham, sweet potatoes, etc.

We make it easy:
-bake ham
-mashed potatoes
-veggie casserole
-salad w/all the fixings
-biscuits

We always have things to nibble on, too, throughout the day (chips, dips,
veggies, dip).

We have little dessert things (brownie bites, choc chip cookies, choc candies etc).

Wine, beer, punch, hot cocoa

We've done turkey or ham or goose before.
I'm not sure what we'll do this year.
Maybe lasagna!

We are thinking of flank steak or prime rib this year...which we've never done, but this will either be Christmas Eve or possibly Christmas evening. I understand at Sams Club the prime rib is partially cooked which is nice. We just don't want anymore turkey! I think we are going to do a couple of soups this year too. The nice thing is, you can cook those in the crock pot and don't have to be over a stove all day, but enjoy time with family and friends. We usually do food grazing on both days as well and just have a variety of platters out for all to enjoy. Sometimes we go out to lunch as well. I think it's just important to be flexible and realize you can change your "traditions" and try new things!
Merry Christmas

we never ate meat Christmas eve growing up, so for us it's fish and this year because my mom is visiting we will pan fry trout. christmas day is usually fried turkey or whatever my husband feels like making. he makes a big breakfast as well.

Chinese takeout seems like a good idea. :-D

Pizza from Pizza Hut.On Christmas we have a huge dinner though.

We do snack stuff at my husband's family. Chips, dips, chili, cookies, meat & cheese platter, fruit, etc. My parents typically do something like chili or tamales. We do a big meal on Christmas day at my parents.

Our traditional Christmas Eve dinner consists of a roast beef, roasted veggies, a green salad, maybe some sautéed green beans, steamed rice (I grew up in Japan, we eat rice with everything!), sautéed mushrooms, a soup of some sort to start, and whatever dessert we want, brownies, ice cream, maybe an apple pie, whatever. I usually pan roast a few duck breasts, too, but this year, in addition to the roast beef, I'm going to roast a whole duck.

It's my most favorite meal of the year!!

We go to the Chinese buffet. Christmas is hectic enough without adding another meal! :-)

We have homemade tacos every year for Christmas Eve so I guess that doesn't help you. What about something in the crock pot? A pork roast would be really good, or any meat really. I hope you find something that will work for you. Good luck.

I usually make a ham with scalloped potatoes. I use the pre-cooked nugget ham, so supper can be ready in less than an hour, that way I can spend the rest of the day doing last minute running around.