Preparing Christmas Dinner in Advance: 5 Simple Tips

When you’re responsible for Christmas dinner, how you go about it will depend on a lot on your budget, your health, your space, and the food choices you and your family makes.

These tips and tricks can work for any type of party, including your holiday dinner party.

You will love this pretty Christmas Planner

Set Your Budget

Setting your budget is very important to do before you start inviting people. This is helpful to know so that you can set a budget and limit on how many people show up.

Alternatively, you may choose to provide the main course and let your guests bring dishes as they will, or that you assign if you have a theme that you want to stick to.

Decide Who Is Invited

Once you have your budget, you can create your invitation list. Even if you aren’t formally inviting people and just your family is showing up because this is the tradition, write it down anyway.

While you’re at it, write down any food allergies or limitations of the guests that you know will be there.

Plan Your Christmas Menu

Now that you’re in the menu-planning stage, it’s important to know whether you’re cooking it all or whatever you can count on individuals to bring what you assign them to bring.

Include the recipe you want them to use too if you do it this way. Alternatively, you can tell them to bring a green bean casserole and let them use their own recipe.

To ensure your guests will stick to the menu assigned, explain in your invitation how it'll work.

Click to grab these Christmas Printables

Choose Simple Christmas Recipes

While it might seem like a great time to try that complicated recipe you found, it’s not. It’s best to try those recipes out on your immediate family rather than at a holiday dinner with many people there.

Instead, choose recipes that have fewer ingredients that are easy to prepare and take little prep time.

Consider Feeding Your Freezer

Some people who have a nice-sized freezer like to serve a lot of different recipes at their holiday gatherings.

They will start feeding their freezer a few weeks prior to the event and then simply heat the food up when it’s time to serve it. This works great for casseroles, dressing, and many desserts.

The important thing to remember is that people are there to be with you and the other guests. They’re not just there to eat. You can make a great easy Christmas dinner by letting everyone make their own personal pizzas or by having a potato bar.

You don’t have to do everything completely traditional to make it a wonderful event.

Don't forget your free Meal Planning Printables

Also, grab the Printable Christmas Planner

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