’Tis the Season to Tuck into Hearty Holiday Dinners
The far corners of the globe all seem to encourage traditional holiday meals. No two are the same, but all seem to be big feasts, as if to say you have to stop and reward yourself.
| 19 Dec 2025 | 01:33
A Christmas table by Elaine Lloyd. Turkey is the most popular bird to adorn a Christmas feast in the US and Britain. But it is far from the old delight, the Christmas goose. (
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It’s the time of year when we gather with friends and family and reward ourselves with a huge holiday feast.
One such famous feast is what Charles Dickens whipped up for the characters in A Christmas Carol. Traveling silently with his three spectral friends—the Ghosts of Christmas Past, Christmas Present, and Christmas Yet to Come—the miserly Ebenezer Scrooge peeked into Bob Cratchit’s holiday dining room to see the family’s meager but meaningful table set with apple sauce, mashed potatoes, and a roast goose. To top it off, there was a traditional pudding, “a speckled cannon-ball, so hard and firm, blazing in half of half a quartern of ignited brandy, and bedight with Christmas holly stuck into the top.”
In Italian-American households, Dec. 24, day before Christmas, is celebrated with the feast of the seven fishes, the Festa dei Sette Pesci, or La Vigilia. This Christmas Eve celebration kicks off the holiday festivities with a huge dinner consisting of seven courses of fish and seafood.
Sweden and other Scandinavian countries serve up decorated pig heads, a ritual that probably evolved in pagan times.
In many countries, the holiday features a roasted bird. In Britain in the days of Bob Cratchit, the traditional bird was usually a goose. But over time, especially in the post—World War II era, it was replaced by the turkey. Younger Britons adopted such alternatives as beef, chicken, and duck. In the US, we consume an estimated 22 million turkeys each Christmas.
Around the world the interesting additions come with dessert.
Australians feast on pavlova, a meringue-based dessert. Originating in either Australia or New Zealand in the early 20th century, it was named after the Russian ballerina Anna Pavlova. Taking the form of a cake-like circular block of baked meringue, pavlova has a crisp crust and soft, light inside. The confection is usually topped with fruit and whipped cream.
Baked goods are everywhere, of course. In India, a white sponge cake covered with cream and decorated with strawberries sits nicely after turkey; in Japan and Canada, the fabled fruitcake is a winner.
One popular sweetmeat in Italy is panettone, an Italian yeast-leavened bread, usually made with raisins, candied fruit peels, almonds, and brandy. A second-choice popular dessert in neighboring Spain is turron; a Mediterranean nougat confection, typically made of honey, sugar, and egg white, with toasted almonds or other nuts, and usually shaped either into a rectangular tablet or a round cake.
Lebanon and Denmark and Sweden appreciate sugar-coated almonds tucked into rice pudding. In Sweden, the person who finds the almond gets an extra holiday present.
Chocolate graces the Filipino celebration as tsokolate or hot cocoa, made with pure locally grown cacao beans; in Austria and the Czech Republic, the sweet candy comes as edible ornaments or chocolate mousse.,
Plum pudding: The pudding course of a British Christmas dinner may often be Christmas pudding, which dates from medieval England. Itching to taste that and other tempting Dickens dishes? Happily, Food and Wine magazine has the recipes ready for home chefs at https://www.foodandwine.com/holidays-events/christmas/how-feast-scrooge-christmas-day
In Britain in the days of Bob Cratchit, the traditional bird was usually a goose. . . . In the US, we consume an estimated 22 million turkeys each Christmas.