Recipes for Christmas Dinner around the World

Christmas dinner is the meal eaten on the Christmas day. Traditionally several days of preparation would go in planning the Christmas dinner. Whether it was preparing the Christmas pudding, setting and decorating the table or proposing a toast; everything was planned much ahead in time with every little detail taken care of.

The traditions of Christmas dinner and its menu vary with different countries and cultures around the world. A traditional English Christmas dinner menu recipe would include roast turkey or goose served with rich chestnut stuffing, sausages wrapped in bacon, cranberry sauce and bread sauce.

Christmas dinner vegetable recipes include brussel sprouts, roasted vegetables mainly potatoes or carrots and parsnips.

For the dessert, the Christmas dinner menu would include Christmas pudding, mince pies, trifle, Christmas cake or Yule log.

So what is it about Christmas dinners in our times that make them not so traditional? The answer lies in the fact that our fast paced lives and the intermingling of cultures have enabled us to learn recipes from the rest of the world and adapt to newer and sophisticated kinds of table decoration and gift exchanging ideas.

How about having a French Christmas eve celebration or a Polish Christmas eve dinner celebration? You may have a mince pie or Hispanic tamale or Mexican cookies for Christmas dinner; the options seem endless and excitingly different today.

Borrowing from the English traditions, Christmas dinner at an American household would also include roast turkey or ham or beef or pork served with dressing and mashed potatoes, green beans and squash. But just as the American culture is sometimes referred to as a salad bowl similarly, the American table during Christmas dinner is reflective of its diversity and mixed culture. Recipes from different ethnic backgrounds have become part of a typical American Christmas celebration.

In Australia, Christmas is in mid-summer and the Christmas dinner usually includes barbequed prawns, steak and chicken. For the dessert, there is ice cream or sorbet.

So as is evident, although the spirit of Christmas remains the same everywhere, there are variations in the way each country or culture celebrates it. Another feature of Christmas celebrations today is that globalization has altered much of the traditional cuisines in households’ world over with newer inclusions here and there.