For us it's Tamales and Posole (exactly like Menudo only not useing tripe, we use pork).. And of course the famous and HUGE BOX full of Buñuelos (Sweet Fried Bread)..
Mine's usually roast beef, greek salad, fancy potatoes, and fresh bread (yay, breadmaker!) ... but the real tradition isn't the dinner as much as the "face stuffings" that come with it. Boatloads of spritz, along with springerle, linzer bars, rosettes, marzipan stollen, and a nice cherry kringle to go along with breakfast.
Would have been filled pizzelle cones this year, but I never got my iron. 
And yes, I am baking-insane this time of year. It's my fix for the next 364 days 
Illy
For us it's Tamales and Posole (exactly like Menudo only not useing tripe, we use pork).. And of course the famous and HUGE BOX full of Buñuelos (Sweet Fried Bread)..
I wanna come to YOUR house!! That sound SO good and it's been SO long since I had a good Tamale!! Not since I lived in CO.
Lisa
Typically British - smoked salmon (lox) to start, then turkey with cranberry relish, stuffing, roast potatoes, mashed parsnips, brussels sprouts, giblet gravy, and to follow Christmas pudding with white sauce (white custard), and brandy butter. After gallons of wine, a pot of coffee and mince pies. All this followed by a run around the block to get rid of those calories, then a nice snooze before starting all over again.
Traditional southern fare: ham, turkey, chilterlings, greens, candied yams, cornbread, oyster dressing, mashed potatoes and gravy, sweet potato pie. May or may not have corn casserole, green beans, cabbage, or some other veggie dish.
Oyster dressing is a BIG deal in my family. It's only served at Christmas no matter who is hosting dinner.
I'm always in charge of dessert which always includes the sweet potato pies, sugar cookies for the kids and fudge for everyone to take home with them.
We usually have a more italian thing. This year i think we might just do the 13(or 7) fish dinner. 
Roast Turkey, sage & onion stuffing, roast potatoes, carrots, sprouts, yorkshire pudding and gravy.
Well, I am Italian so, with my mom we will celebrate on Christmas eve. We will have a turkey or ham,and salad that's just a side to the Octopus, squid, meatballs, sausage, pasta, homemade bread and pickled olives. When we were little and my dad was still living, it was always a late night with plenty of family around. The Octopus and other fish would be served really late,like midnight, well after the dinner was gone and digested. lol. I remember gathering in a relatives basement/makeshift dining room or moving all the funiture out of the living room and setting up a huge table and just eating and everyone talking and drinking and laughing. The good old days! Does anyone still celebrate like that? I miss it! We're all to busy nowadays to just enjoy each others company. Opps, sorry, I'm slipping off into my own, sorry. and cut.
when growing up:
first a V8 cocktail, then buffet style: ham, corn pudding, mashed potatoes, candied yams, cranberries (both kinds mixed together), stuffed celery, pickle tray, Aunt Ruth's jello mold (lime jello, cottage cheese, crushed pineapple, walnuts) and burnt rolls (mom's speciality -- always forgot them in the oven). For dessert: cookies (8 or so types includin Kolshkis (sp?), stuffed dates, freezer fruitcake, rum balls and spiked coffee (usually ammeretto).
only time we ever got turkey for Chirstmas was if Aunt Ruth made it at her house and brought. My Mom was deathly allergic to the smell of it.
Now as adult still do the ham, corn puddingand desserts like mom did, but have jettisoned the V8 and yams and do garlic/sour cream mashed potatoes and homemade cranberries (no caned stuff!) And Aunt's Ruth jello mold is but a distant memory.
Merry Christmas and Blessed New Year!
Ok...here I go
Turkey or Ham (sometimes Both)-Sage Stuffing-Mashed Potatoes & Gravy
Broccoli Cheese Casserole-Potato Salad-Cranberry Sauce-Sweet Potatoes
Homemade Rolls-Carrot Cake or Fruit Cake-Gingerbread & Sugar Cookies
Assortment of home-made Candies-Pumpkin Roll-Apple /Cherry / Custard Pies-Fruit Salad-Cheese Ball-Spinach Dip
But since I am having the "EMPTY NEST SYNDROME" this year and we will probally have to drive to my DS &DDL house because they both have to work...we will spend Christmas eve day with them...so I will pack up the goodies and take them with me...Then Christmas Day will be spent at home with DH-DD-DGS-DSL....so another meal will be prepared. This is the first year this has happened to me....always before everyone is at my house. So I am making all the sweet goodies and other foods....but I may have chicken! 
What has happened to the good old days when people were always together for the holidays and you did't have to work?
Debbie
We're Croatian-American, so Christmas dinner for us is a ham, stuffed cabbage, roasted lamb, kielbasa and sauerkraut and a special egg bread called bozinac. We also have nut, apricot and poppyseed rolls, and about a million different kinds of cookies. As for the booze, we drink two around the holidays (and other occasions) - slivovica, which is a super-strong plum brandy,and kruskovac which is a sweet, syrupy pear liqueur.
We're Croatian-American, so Christmas dinner for us is a ham, stuffed cabbage, roasted lamb, kielbasa and sauerkraut and a special egg bread called bozinac.
omg yum, I had homemade perogies 2 nights in a row (gotta make lots or there arent any leftovers lmao. Ok I'm hungry now
all your dinners sound great lol . yeah food is a great part of Christmas holidays methinks.
Growing up it was always goose and red cabbage and what not- traditional German dinner- oh and Christmas celebrated 24th.
Ok and over the years the venue changes- but we often experiment with different ethnic menues. I love making a traditional Spanish dinner, or some times we'll do French or whatever we all agree on. Thsi is not just the one meal, this is a week long process lol. From nibbles and alcoholic/non alcoholic bevvying to dessert table lol.
I cant wait
We do basic Thanksgiving-like dinner with the exception of adding chicken and noodles, polish sausage and povitica. Yummmy! For all who aren't polish or croation Povitica is a nut bread. Here's a link to a site that sells it. http://www.povitica.com/default.asp It's expensive, but soooo worth it. I told my mother when I was getting married that I wanted her to make me a wedding cake of it. (She used to decorate wedding cakes plus my great grandmother gave her the recipe for povitica and she used to make it all the time. ) She didn't do it, but we did serve it at the reception.
Because it is so hot here at Christmas our Christmas dinner (which is actually lunch) is usually cold stuff. When I was a kid it was cold turkey and ham and salads and an ice-cream version of plum pudding for dessert, pavlova and sometimes the traditional plum pudding, some years we have done a BBQ instead and last year we lived it up and had seafood - prawns and balmain bugs (little crustaceans very yummy) since it was just the me, DH & MIL & FIL.
We're Croatian-American, so Christmas dinner for us is a ham, stuffed cabbage, roasted lamb, kielbasa and sauerkraut and a special egg bread called bozinac. We also have nut, apricot and poppyseed rolls, and about a million different kinds of cookies. As for the booze, we drink two around the holidays (and other occasions) - slivovica, which is a super-strong plum brandy,and kruskovac which is a sweet, syrupy pear liqueur.
Slivovica will knock your socks off. I used to work at a bank and I had many croation customers come in. Well one year one of my customers made some and brought me in a jar of it. Whewwww!! That stuff could have burned your eyebrows off!! It was good, but in VERY small sips.
We have home made perogies on Christmas eve with snacky things like raw veggies and dip, cheese and crackers, hot wings and such.
Christmas lunch is duck, dressing, saurkraut, red cabbage, green beans, sticky balls (aka potato balls), sweet potatoes, fruit salad and rolls.
Ours with mom's family includes:
cheese ball & crackers
cream cheese and salsa dip
cornbread
potato soup (sometimes)
spaghetti
chili
little smokies
shredded cheese
fritoes
Snickerdoodles
various candies (homemade)
No bake cookies
other various desserts
pop
The one with DH's family
Turkey
gravy
mashed potatoes
ham
corn
rolls
pumpkin pies
can't remember anything else. I just have to cook turkey and pumpkin pies for this one.
My fiance's family (where we will be going) is the same as Thanksgiving, but with more sweets. What I miss is my grampa's side get-togethers, of
chili
oyster stew (the runny kind with milk, butter, and oysters)
relish trays
sandwich fixins
cheese and crackers
goodies
I actually prefer not to have the big meals with ten sides, but everyone is different. My father's wife serves prime rib and baked potatoes, bought the day before at HyVee and heated up.
When we were growing up it was pretty much like Thanksgiving, with lot's of baked goods. About 10 years ago we changed it so that the womenfolk could enjoy the day more and not spend the day in the kitchen. So now we have
Prime rib
Fried shrimp
twicebaked potatos
vegetables
dinner rolls
and lots of baked goods
Great thread... it's nice to know how different yet the same we all celebrate Christmas.
Sweetness....LOL! Yep, slivo will kick your butt pretty fast. We cook it down with alot of sugar and make a kind of toddy with it. The heat burns off some of the alcohol but that stuff is literally 50% alcohol, so even then it's not completely harmless. My grandmother used slivo for "medicinal" purposes all the time. I drank so much of that stuff as a child! When my teeth hurt from my braces, Gram would give me a shot. When we couldn't sleep, Gram would give us a shot. That was just the old country way and we never thought twice about it. I think it was a good thing, though, as I got older...alcohol wasn't some big mystery to me so I never got into the partying scene in college or was tempted to over-indulge.
I also had nut roll at my wedding...I couldn't offend my family by not having huge trays of it sitting right next to the wedding cake! Nut roll is big business for me during the holidays. I bake and sell them right along with all of the traditional Croatian cookies and pastries. Pittsburgh has a huge eastern European population, alot first and second generation (like me!). Our grocery stores even sell them at their bakeries, but they're not that good so I do pretty well. And it's my grandma's recipe...I know she's happy on the other side (she died 13 year ago) seeing how much people enjoy her recipe!
My husband's family serves the same things that they have for Thanksgiving. No one makes piles of cookies here either.
My mother cooked a big dinner only a couple times that I remember and only when we had a bunch of young soldiers over so they could have a traditional dinner since they were far from home. Most years it was a cold meal consisiting of snack food really: meats, cheeses, crackers, chips, dips etc. She baked for over a month before Christmas so we would have tons of sweets out and could eat whatever we wanted for that one day of the year. That way she could play with us all day.
I always get snack foods, make some cheese balls and put that out in the evening for us to nibble on after we've been at the relatives.
We all know what Thanksgiving's was!!! But Christmas is that time when ethnic heritage and family traditions come into play.
For us it is Ham, sometimes Turkey.
I am originally from Puerto Rico, so ours is:
Roast Pork
Rice and Pigeons Peas (Arroz con gandules)
Green Platain Pies (Pasteles de Masa)
Potato Salad
Green Salad
Flan (Custard)
Pork is like Turkey on Thanksgiving day for us at Christmas time! Lots of Pork!!!
For us it's Tamales and Posole (exactly like Menudo only not useing tripe, we use pork).. And of course the famous and HUGE BOX full of Buñuelos (Sweet Fried Bread)..
I wanna come to YOUR house!! That sound SO good and it's been SO long since I had a good Tamale!! Not since I lived in CO.
Lisa
Save a seat for me because I'm coming too. Love Tamales.
Our dinner usually consists of prime rib roast, potato croquettes, a vegetable and a green salad. Something special for dessert. One year I went all out and made homemade ravioli with breaded veal cutlets for 20 people. It was delicious but we later agreed that it didn't seem like Christmas dinner.
Ham for new years with homemade applesauce, brown sugar glazed carrots and mashed potatoes. Oh, and homemade yeast dinner rolls that become ham sandwiches for the next couple of days.
Well, I am Italian so, with my mom we will celebrate on Christmas eve. We will have a turkey or ham,and salad that's just a side to the Octopus, squid, meatballs, sausage, pasta, homemade bread and pickled olives. When we were little and my dad was still living, it was always a late night with plenty of family around. The Octopus and other fish would be served really late,like midnight, well after the dinner was gone and digested. lol. I remember gathering in a relatives basement/makeshift dining room or moving all the funiture out of the living room and setting up a huge table and just eating and everyone talking and drinking and laughing. The good old days! Does anyone still celebrate like that? I miss it! We're all to busy nowadays to just enjoy each others company. Opps, sorry, I'm slipping off into my own, sorry. and cut.
Wow, that pretty much describes my family. Add a few sea urchines, coucous and a couple of cannoles and were good to go.LOL.
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