We also come from a meatless Christmas Eve culture - seafood soups and onion soups are big.

Prime rib (usually w/ a pistachio or horseradish crust)! So easy and fabulous.

Depending on how busy we are we either do a bunch of easier to prepare or store bought and reheat/cook appetizers or two or three courses of fondue if we have the time. We try to make time for fondue most years.

Always host a big formal xmas dinner so xmas eve is ALWAYS chinese carryout and champagne! Easy relaxed and we are not too wiped out to do a great feast the next day.

We just do appetizers for Christmas Eve. My favortie dinner ever. One filled with cheese, crackers, smoked salmon, crudite, yummy rolls, fruit kebabs, and fizzy drinks. Fun for all ages .

We always go out to eat, too.

We're still working out our traditional Christmas Eve dinner in our house...for the last few years ham and scalloped potatoes have been involved with a rotating cast of other dishes. Growing up, my parents always made the same crab soup from a 1970-something issue of Gourmet magazine. If my husband ate crab, I'd make that in a heartbeat.

We always go out to eat on Christmas Eve (somehow we always seem to end up at a Chinese restaurant). After supper, we drive through different neighborhoods and oohh and awww at the lights and decorations.

When we get home, we eat Christmas cookies and drink hot chocolate. Then of course, cookies for Santa and food for the Reindeer.

Right before bed we read the Christmas Story. Not the "I in my kerchief and ma in her cap" story. The real Christmas story from Luke 2.

Don't laugh, but we do latkes. We used to have a group of Jewish friends who came over every Christmas Eve (when we lived in another state) and somehow the tradition stuck. Latkes are really easy, great for kids, and go great with a nice salad. I make home-made applesauce to go with. Yuuuuuummmy.

We do lobster, easy but kind of expensive.

I do chili - fast to cook, can be done in advance, and serves a crowd. Usually serve beer and maybe cornbread, sometimes a salad. My mom usually does lobster chowder with champagne. Mmm - I think I like Christmas Eve meals better than Christmas dinner!

Anonymous wrote:Our traditional Christmas Eve is homemade vegetable soup, rolls, and shrimp cocktail. SO easy and a great winter meal.

We also have a Christmas Eve soup tradition. We have two soups, one is usually meat and one vegetarian but some people eat both. My mom usually makes Maryland Crab soup as one of them, but we've done lobster bisque and oyster stew before. The vegetable soup also varies, pumpkin, cheddar and broccoli, etc... We try to make the soups fancy since they're the main player. We serve a variety of cheeses with crackers and two types of good bread. Christmas cookies for dessert. We love the tradition plus it keeps things low key. Even a complex soup is easier than a meal with meat and sides. Soup is always flexible with the church schedule and it serves a lot of people for not a lot of money. And like the pp, we usually have shrimp cocktail ahead of time.

I have Christmas Eve at my house and have every year since DH and I were engaged. Each year, we pick a different theme and everything about the meal matches the theme--plates, music, people even dress up to some extent. It's a lot of fun and the family really gets into it. We've done a Western theme, Hawaiian theme, Mexican theme, Seafood theme--all kinds of different things. It's never boring because its new stuff each year and we usually vote on the theme for the following year at the current year's dinner.

Having said that, I don't host Christmas so I can concentrate all of my efforts on Christmas Eve.

Our traditional Christmas Eve is homemade vegetable soup, rolls, and shrimp cocktail. SO easy and a great winter meal.

I'm from Texas & we always have tamales.