Christmas Recipes

Here are our delicious Christmas recipes to guide your holiday menu planning all season long. From recipes for holiday party appetizers and delicious Christmas morning breakfasts, to festive Christmas dinners, and more, we have you covered.

A traditional Christmas Dinner often depends on culture, customs, and the region you live in. If you’re in Alaska, you may be serving snow crab for dinner. If you’re in Hawaii, you might be serving Kalua Pig with macaroni salad.

Whatever your plans are this holiday season, we’re here to help you put together a memorable menu. So eat, drink, and be merry with these recipes for sides, mains, appetizers, desserts, and drinks.

Christmas will next be celebrated on Wednesday, December 25, 2024.

Christmas Main Dishes

Do you usually serve turkey for your holiday dinner? We’ve got the best recipe for you below. Want to try something different? Impress your Christmas guests with these course recipes for prime rib, holiday ham, steaks, seafood, and more.

Christmas Appetizer & Snack Recipes

Whether you want Christmas appetizers for a holiday party or tasty snacks for Christmas day, these recipes will be the hit of the holiday season.

Soup & Salad Recipes

Soups and salad might not be the first thing you think of when it comes to a Christmas menu but these recipes are reason alone to celebrate the holiday.

Side Dish Recipes

Whether you’re serving a holiday ham, juicy prime rib, or short ribs, we’ve got the best side dishes for Christmas Eve or Day dinner.

Dessert Recipes

Get on everyone’s nice list this year by serving these Christmas desserts during the holiday baking season.

Breakfast Recipes

These Christmas morning breakfast recipes will help cap off your holiday morning the right way.

Christmas Drinks

These Christmas cocktails and drinks will put some extra cheer in your season.

Christmas 101

Here are a few tips and hacks for navigating the Christmas festivities.

Christmas Food Traditions

Wherever Christmas is celebrated, special food is always on the menu, even if the foods are different from country to country. Below we’ll explore some different Christmas food traditions around the world.

• Feast of the Seven Fishes: The Feast of the Seven Fishes is an Italian-American Christmas Eve celebration that consists of fish prepared in seven different ways.
• Marzipan: Marzipan is popular Christmas treat around the world and in Germany exchanging marzipan pigs at Christmas is one way in which Germans wish each other good luck as a new year begins.
• Bacalao a la vizcaina: Bacalao a la vizcaina originates from the Basque region of Spain and is cooked all over Mexico for traditional Christmas Eve and New Year’s eve feasts.
• Christmas Goose: In Europe, a roasted goose on the holiday table has been a tradition since ancient times and it used to be part of American Christmas traditions but it has since faded. However, a Christmas goose still belongs to a German Christmas dinner like a turkey belongs to an American Thanksgiving dinner.
• Fruitcake: The American tradition of eating fruitcake around the holidays has roots in British tradition, when the treat was sometimes called Christmas cake or plum cake. 
• Monkey Bread: No one knows the exact origin but for many American families serving Monkey Bread has always been our Christmas tradition.
• Kentucky Fried Chicken: In Japan, the KFC Christmas bucket (Christmas cake included) is enjoyed by millions every Christmas Eve.
• Kūčios: In Lithuania, Christmas Eve is considered more important than Christmas day and is celebrated with 12 dishes on the table to symbolize the months of the year.
• Panettone: This is an Italian type of sweet bread originally from Milan and is usually enjoyed for Christmas and New Year across Europe and North and South America.
• Tamales: Making tamales during the Christmas holidays is a tradition for Mexican and Mexican American families that has been passed down for decades. 
• Christmas Pudding: Christmas pudding originated as a 14th century porridge originally known as “frumenty”, that was made of beef and mutton, fruits, wine and spices. Christmas pudding should have 13 ingredients – that represent Jesus and the 12 disciples. It is generally made from a combination of dried fruit, candied fruit peel, and citrus zests in a dense, sticky sponge cake.
• Bûche de Noël: Bûche de Noël — or Christmas Log — replaced the traditional French Christmas eve ritual of burning a log with a rolled sponge cake decorated in lashings of chocolate and dustings of sugar to appear as a snowflake-shimmered log.
• Melomakarona: Christmas Honey Biscuits is a Greek Christmas tradition. In the olden days, Melomakarona was served leading up to Christmas as a Lenten “kerasma” (treat) to enjoy during fasting.
• Roast Pig: The Christmas and New Year’s Eve pig roast tradition is one that extends to the Philippines, Caribbean nations, as well as many parts of Latin America.
• Joulupöytä: In Finland ‘Joulupöytä’ is a feast of Nordic Christmas delicacies, such as pork, fish, cabbages, beetroot, and mushrooms.
• Halászlé: Halászlé is a traditional Hungarian fish soup served on Christmas Eve.
• Zakuski: In Russia this refers to a variety of hot and cold hors d’oeuvre that revolve around salmon, caviar and egg and is intended to follow each shot of vodka or another alcoholic drink. Surprisingly this tradition has not spread worldwide.
• Christmas Turkey: A Brazilian Christmas dinner features a Christmas turkey (peru de natal) garnished with fresh or canned fruit and an orange sauce.
• Chicken Bones Candy: This Canadian Christmastime staple is a vibrant pink candy made of pulled sugar, with a cinnamon-flavored outer layer and a bittersweet chocolate filling. Why the name is “Chicken Bones” or how it is linked with Christmas is a mystery.
• Spiced Beef: Spiced beef is a tradition that goes back centuries to when the merchant ships would cure the meat for longevity. This dish is typically enjoyed in the County Cork for Christmas and New Year’s Eve.
• Christmas Luau: Instead of a traditional Christmas dinner you’ll find a Christmas luau in Hawaii. Some of the traditional luau dishes include kalua pig, poke, lomi-lomi salmon, poi, lumpia, Hawaiian short ribs, lualau and haupia.