If someone invited to you to “Christmas Dinner” what day would you assume they meant?
A Christmas Eve Dinner or A Christmas Day Dinner?
My immediate family usually has it on Christmas Eve but at some relatives would consider on Christmas Day.
Your thoughts?
We have gift-giving on Christmas Eve, but the dinner on Christmas Day.
My wife’s side of the family does Christmas on Christmas Eve, with all of the cousins and grandkids and such. Then all of the individual families do Christmas on Christmas day. For Mrs. H and me, that means that we sit around at home, the same we would do on any other non-work day.
December 25th for us.
It’s just me and my wife and she will be bringing Xmas dinner home from the Chinese take-out place when she finishes playing church services on the 25th. It’s a new tradition for us.
I would assume Christmas day - but most people I know celebrate both days, so they tend to say either “Christmas Eve” or “Christmas Day”, not simply “Christmas dinner”
The big fancy meal is always the midday meal of Christmas day. Dinner as lunch, not supper. Usually a bit late, like 2:00 or 2:30.
Christmas Eve is for listening to (or singing, sometimes) Christmas music. Maybe even going out caroling, if there are enough interested people to make at least a trio. And cooking some of the big feast food in advance, the kind of things that are perfectly good reheated, so they’re already taken care of and don’t occupy burner or oven space that’s going to be needed for other things.
When we have more people, both. We had a turkey Christmas Eve and a roast Christmas day. With fewer people we’d never get through them, even with leftovers, so we moderate on Christmas Eve.
Roasts are easier to cook than turkeys, so more suitable for a day we’re busy opening presents.
We have two:
Growing up, Christmas Eve was the big family get-together day as Polish Roman Catholics. It’s a meal without meat (though fish is allowed, and the focus.) Christmas Day we didn’t do much of anything. These last few years it’s been Christmas Eve at my family’s and Christmas Day with the roast and stuff at my in-laws.
Same for us, although we eat “dinner” around 1pm. I spend Xmas morning cooking ~60% of the meal (turkey, cranberry sauce, stuffing, gravy) and then cart it all over to my SIL and BIL’s filth encrusted hovel perfectly adequate house where we will eat with approximately 897 other people, all crammed into a room about 13’ by 10’.
Christmas eve is just for us now that my mom has passed. We used to go ovet to my folks house for a light dinner and gift exchange but my dad is a scrooge so tonight we’ll likely go and drive through the neighborhood looking at light displays, then get some take & bake pizza for dinner.
I’d say this year it’s Xmas Eve dinner. True to form it’s a haphazard menu. King crab claws with butter lemon and garlic, shrimp cocktail, couscous salad, pasta bake with vegan chorizo and assorted charcuterie platters. Bread machine bread.
Pear galette and hot toddies later.
Tomorrow both a turkey breast and a tofurky roast with GB casserole, roasted little potatoes and cranberry sauce.
Pre-pandemic, I did two Christmas dinners. A bunch of friends would get together on Christmas Eve for a full dinner: turkey, ham, and assorted sides. Then we would exchange presents, with (for reasons lost to antiquity when we had started doing this) me acting as Santa Claus. This was followed, after we had had time to digest the meal, there would be pies and assorted other desserts.
Christmas Day was the family; we all met at my sister’s for a mid-afternoon feast. Over the years some of the family would skip the meal to be with in-laws and show up afterwards. Unfortunately, this year there will only be a few of us there, as one of us has health issues which preclude the anti-vaxxer faction from attending.
Gift-giving is on Christmas morning. Christmas Dinner is Christmas Day.
As usual, I’m making prime rib, baked potatoes, and creamed spinach with feta. It’s a small roast; only two ribs and about 4.75 pounds. I’ve never made one so small, so I’ll have to watch it so that it stays rare; but it’s enough for at least two dinners for the two of us.
I’m not making escargots as appetisers before Christmas Dinner this year. I’m making them tonight, and they will be Christmas Eve Dinner. I also got some shrimps, so I’ll make shrimp cocktail for tonight as well.
If it’s on Christmas Eve, then it’s Christmas Eve Dinner, in my mind.
This.
Christmas Day is presents early and big dinners after. Christmas Eve is officially nothing. There may well be family, there may well be eating or even feasting, but if so it’s all a sorta-dress rehearsal for the real thing that’s only and exclusively on the 25th.
When I was about junior high age, we started opening one present on Christmas Eve, but other than that, everything else was on Christmas Day.
We never had a sit-down-with-everyone Christmas dinner. It’s more like all-day grazing. Thinking back to when I was a kid at my grandparents’ house right up to this afternoon at my brother’s place - all the elements of a proper dinner are there, minus the table settings and conventional meal time.
My inlaws would do dinner on Christmas day, generally a big midday meal, and no gifts were opened till after, much to the tortured consternation of their kids (and later grandkids.) My husband and I have never had Christmas away from either side of the family, so I don’t know if we’d do a traditional dinner or not. We may figure that out in the next couple of years, as our fathers are both gone and our mothers are both in their 90s…
For the last 18 years in a row, we host my family for soup fest xmas eve, then travel to my MIL’s house for xmas dinner with her family.
New Year’s Eve is just the two of us at whatever venue we choose.
When I was growing up, we had Christmas Eve dinner with my father’s family, and Christmas Day lunch with mother’s family. These days we celebrate on the 24th in the evening, including staying up until midnight to open gifts.