20 Traditional Christmas Dishes From Around The World

Christmas celebrations differ worldwide, but one thing they all have in common is that food and drink are always part of the equation. Whether you're celebrating Christmas in the northern or southern hemisphere, the holiday usually involves getting together with family and friends and enjoying delicious dishes that can be savored and shared.

Popular Christmas dishes in America include turkey, honey-baked ham, and mashed potatoes. However, travel farther abroad, and you'll find a wide array of foods that are just as indulgent. Many holiday dishes tell a story of the place and people they come from. For example, you might find tamales on the table at a Mexican Christmas Eve dinner, suckling pig at a Filipino feast, or fermented fish as part of a Norwegian holiday spread. If you're looking for some new dishes to add to your holiday menu this year, consider making some of these traditional Christmas dishes from around the globe.

The French take culinary traditions very seriously, and Christmas is no exception. The main meal is typically enjoyed on Christmas Eve, and it's an all-out culinary affair. It might start with champagne and segue into starters, mains, sides, and desserts. The dishes vary, but one that almost always makes an appearance at a traditional French Christmas dinner is foie gras.

Though it may be controversial in other parts of the world, foie gras is deeply ingrained in French culinary culture. This decadent delicacy is duck or goose liver from birds that have been deliberately fattened. It's often served as pâté with toast and fruit preserves. The rich, buttery flavor is the perfect way to kick off the festive meal. The foie gras might be followed by dishes like oysters, turkey, and Bûche de Noël (yule log).

Many families celebrate Christmas in Greece with Christopsomo or "Christ's bread." This round Greek Christmas bread is always decorated with a cross. Recipes vary, but the bread typically includes flour, yeast, sugar, and aromatic spices like star anise and cinnamon. Some people also add ingredients like walnuts, honey, raisins, and brandy.

Many Greek households make Christopsomo a day or two before the holiday and eat it on Christmas Day. The bread is considered an offering to Christ, so it's made with the utmost care and top-notch ingredients. When it's time to eat the bread, a family member will bless the bread with the sign of the cross before dividing it for the family to share. The bread is eaten to honor Christ and ensure good health and fortune for the family in the coming year.

Christmas is all about classic comfort foods, and few foods are more classic or comforting in Mexico than tamales. These plump packages of goodness date back to pre-Columbian times, and they're a quintessential celebration food. They consist of masa (corn dough) that's mixed with fillings, wrapped in corn husks or banana leaves, and steamed (if you can't find corn husks or banana leaves, you still have options). Popular fillings include chicken, pork, beans, and corn.

Many Mexican families have their holiday feast on Christmas Eve, aka Noche Buena. That night, friends and family feast on a wide range of dishes. Tamales are an absolute must, but other dishes could include pozole (hominy and meat soup), ensalada Navideña (a creamy apple salad), and buñuelos (fried dough with cinnamon sugar). The food is often washed down with Christmas fruit punch or a glass of boozy rompope (Mexican eggnog).

One of the most iconic Christmas dishes in Iceland is hangikjöt, which translates to "hung meat."  Hangikjöt is often made with lamb, although some people make it with mutton or horse meat. The preparation dates back to Viking times, and it involves hanging a leg of meat and smoking it with burning sheep dung or birch wood.

There are several ways you can eat hangikjöt. It can be sliced and layered in sandwiches, chopped for tartare, or eaten on its own like prosciutto. At Christmas, it's typically boiled and served with sides like potatoes and carrots. Many people also slather it in a white sauce, which is essentially béchamel. Another common accompaniment is laufabrauð or leaf bread. This thin fried bread is another classic Icelandic Christmas food.

Christmas falls in the middle of summer in Australia, so it shouldn't be surprising that many holiday dishes are lighter than those eaten in colder climes. Seafood is popular, as are potato salads and cold meats. For dessert, a refreshing pavlova is a classic Christmas treat. This light and airy cake features meringue topped with whipped cream and fresh fruit. 

The origin of pavlova is hotly contested between Australia and New Zealand. The only thing most people agree on was that it was named after Anna Pavlova, a Russian ballerina who toured both countries in 1926. New Zealanders say it was created at a hotel in Wellington and inspired by the ballerina's tutu. Australians say a chef at a Perth hotel created it and named it after a customer commented that the dessert was "as light as Pavlova." 

Nothing says Christmas in Kenya like nyama choma. This delectable barbecue dish is popular in East Africa, and it features meat cooked over a fire. Nyama choma is typically made with goat meat, but it can also be made with lamb, beef, or chicken. The meat is marinated in spices and grilled until smoky and succulent. It's a great dish for sharing with family and friends, which makes it perfect for a Christmas dinner celebration.

Nyama choma may be the highlight of a Kenyan Christmas meal, but no barbecue is complete without some tasty sides. Popular side dishes include chapati (flatbread), ugali (cornmeal porridge), and pilau (rice cooked with broth and spices). Many people also serve nyama choma with kachumbari, a salad made with raw tomatoes, onions, and chiles. 

Argentina is another southern hemisphere spot where the weather is usually warm at Christmas. With that in mind, it makes sense that cold dishes are often served during the holidays. Vitel toné is a popular Christmas dish that's typically served cold or at room temperature. It consists of thinly sliced, poached veal topped with a creamy sauce made of tuna, anchovies, and mayo. The final touch is a sprinkling of capers.

If vitel toné sounds vaguely familiar, you may be thinking of vitello tonnato from Italy. Italian immigrants brought the dish with them to Argentina, where it took on a few small twists. For example, many Italian recipes call for hard-boiled egg yolks and olive oil in the sauce instead of mayo. Other than that though, the dish has remained largely unchanged.

If you visit a Christmas market in Germany, there's a good chance you'll find people imbibing in big mugs of feuerzangenbowle. The name translates to "fire tongs punch," and that's exactly what you get with this flaming holiday drink. It consists of red wine, cinnamon, cloves, lemon juice, and orange juice that's heated to create mulled wine, which is best made with certain types of wine. What makes feuerzangenbowle special is the sugar loaf that's set on tongs over the drink, doused in rum, and set ablaze.

Feuerzangenbowle is popular not only for its novelty appeal but also its Christmas-y flavors and boozy kick. The spices blend beautifully with the caramelized sugar, and the wine and rum give it an extra warming sensation. If you want something slightly milder, glühwein is regular mulled wine without the rum, sugar, and flames. Eierpunsch is another Christmas drink similar to eggnog that's spiked with brandy.

Russians celebrate Christmas a little differently than many other cultures around the world. For one, Orthodox Christmas falls on January 7, and it's usually a quiet day spent with family. New Year's Eve is the big celebration when people feast and party. That being said, the week between New Year's and Christmas Day is typically all about friends, family, and food. One dish that's often served during the holidays is Olivier salad.

Also called Russian salad, the Olivier salad was created by a French chef named Lucien Olivier at the Hermitage restaurant in Moscow in the late 1800s. The original recipe included luxurious ingredients like smoked duck, caviar, and crayfish. Today, a typical Oliver salad is a little more budget-friendly. It usually includes potatoes, eggs, meat, and veggies in a creamy mayo dressing. 

A Christmas Day feast in the Catalonia region of Spain almost always starts with a big bowl of soup. However, no ordinary soup will do. It must be a bowl of sopa de galets. Galets are shell-shaped pasta, and for this special soup, they're stuffed with meatballs made from pork and beef. 

Sopa de galets can be complicated to make, but that's what makes this dish so tasty. First, you need to make the stock with ingredients like pork and beef bones, ground pork, ground beef, chicken, and vegetables. As it simmers away, you can make the meatballs and stuff or pipe them into the pasta shells. Add the pasta and meatballs to the broth, boil until done, and you have a hearty Christmas soup Catalan style.

Christmas is a huge deal in the Philippines. Many people start celebrating in September, and the festivities run all the way to the first week of January. Noche Buena (Christmas Eve) is the biggest feasting event of the season. Central to the dinner table is lechon, a whole pig roasted until crispy on the outside and tender and juicy on the inside.

Much like turkey, lechon is a labor of love that can take hours to cook perfectly. The pig is often brined or marinated first to infuse flavor and ensure the meat remains moist. Then it's seasoned with ingredients like salt, pepper, garlic, and lemongrass. The whole pig is spit-roasted for hours over open flames and basted constantly until the skin is golden brown and the meat is tender.

Lutefisk and its murky origins may sound strange to outsiders, but for Norwegians, it's a beloved Christmas delicacy. It's made by soaking dried cod in water for several days, then soaking it for another few days in water with lye. The lye causes the fish to swell up and take on a spongy, almost jelly-like texture. The lye is also poisonous, so the lutefisk fish must be soaked in water again for several days before it's ready to eat.

Lutefisk dinners are common around the holidays in Norway as well as in several other Nordic countries and places with large Scandinavian populations. The fish can be baked or poached, and it's typically served with potatoes and mushy peas. Many people also drown it in butter or cream sauce. If you can get past the somewhat slimy texture and fishy taste, many say it's a downright delicious dish.

Tourtière is a classic French Canadian dish that dates back to the 1600s. French settlers brought the recipe for this savory meat pie with them to Canada, and it became a tradition to make it as part of the Christmas Eve feast called Réveillon. Today, you'll find variations of tourtière featuring spice-laden meat or seafood packed into a flaky, buttery crust.

A traditional tourtière typically contains ground pork or beef, although you can use any type of meat or fish. The meat is cooked with onions and garlic and seasoned with spices like cloves, allspice, and nutmeg. The aromatic filling is piled into a pastry shell, topped with more pastry, and baked until golden brown. It's often served alongside other holiday dishes like roasted vegetables and mashed potatoes (check out our secrets to make your mashed potatoes taste even better).

Italy may be best known for pizza and pasta, but come Christmas time, panettone is the dish everyone craves. This large dome-topped bread is light and fluffy but also buttery and full of citrusy, fruity flavors. It's typically made with flour, yeast, eggs, butter, and sugar and contains fruits like raisins and candied orange peel. Some people also add nuts and chocolate.

Panettone can take days to proof properly, so many people buy it from bakeries and grocery stores. It can be enjoyed in the morning with coffee or tea or served as a dessert with decadent toppings like chocolate sauce or cream sauce. Just be sure to share it with family and friends, though. According to Italy Magazine, it's considered bad luck to cut off the domed top or to eat it all by yourself.

Like many other Orthodox Christians around the world, Orthodox Ethiopians celebrate Christmas on January 7 instead of December 25. The celebration is called Ganna, and it marks the end of a 40-day fasting period where people typically only eat one vegan dish a day. Christmas Day is when most people break the fast with a rich and hearty dish called doro wat.

Doro wat is a beloved Ethiopian stew that features chicken simmered in a fiery sauce with hard-boiled eggs. The stew gets its vibrant color and flavors from berbere. This fragrant spice mix includes chiles, cardamom, fenugreek, and coriander. After cooking the doro wat for hours until it's thick and rich, it's typically served with a thin flatbread called injera, which is used to scoop up the stew.

Many families in Brazil wouldn't dream of having a Christmas meal without rabanada. Similar to French toast, rabanada is a fried bread dish. It starts with thick slices of crusty bread that are dipped in milk and sweetened condensed milk, then dunked in eggs, and fried. While the bread is still hot, it's rolled in cinnamon sugar.

Rabanada can be eaten as a breakfast dish, but it's often served as a dessert for Christmas Eve dinner in Brazil. The meal could start with pão de queijo (cheese bread) and then feature mains like roasted turkey or chester (an extra-meaty chicken). Typical sides include salpicão (chicken salad) and farofa (toasted cassava flour with bacon). If you still have room after all of that, the rabanada makes for a pretty sweet end to the meal.

If you want to introduce some Caribbean vibes to your Christmas meal, consider making a pepperpot. It's the national dish of Guyana, a small country on the Caribbean coast of South America. Guyanese people often eat this rich, meaty stew for breakfast on Christmas morning, although it can be eaten any time of day or night.

A traditional pepperpot includes tough cuts of beef that are braised for hours in a vibrant sauce featuring chiles, garlic, ginger, cinnamon, and cloves. It gets its distinctive flavor from cassareep, a thick syrup made from cassava root that tastes slightly sweet and bitter. Cassareep also has antiseptic properties that keep the meat from spoiling. Some people also add orange peel and nutmeg to give their pepperpot some extra Christmas flavors and vibrancy. 

Christmas Eve in Ukraine is all about Sviata Vecheria or the "Holy Dinner." The meal consists of 12 different dishes that symbolize the 12 apostles. The first dish is typically a big pot of kutia, a sweet porridge-like concoction made with wheat berries. Usually, the head of the household will take the first spoonful and then the rest of the family will dig in. 

Every family has their own recipe for kutia, but it typically consists of boiled wheat berries sweetened with honey. Some people add nuts, poppy seeds, and dried fruits. After the kutia is served, the meal can be followed by dishes like borshch (beet soup), holubtsi (cabbage rolls), and varenyky (pierogies). The food is often accompanied by uzvar, a sweet drink made with fruit and spices.

Bacalhau has a long and storied history in Portugal. The Portuguese have been fishing cod in the North Atlantic Ocean since the 14th century. Back in those days, salting and drying fish was essential for making it last longer. Salted cod became such a reliable food staple in Portugal that people called it the "faithful friend." Bacalhau also became an integral part of Christmas Eve dinner, aka Consoada.

Traditionally, Catholics in Portugal didn't eat meat on Christmas Eve, so bacalhau was the next best thing. Today, many families still make bacalhau the star of Consoada. The salted cod is often boiled and served with potatoes, carrots, and cabbage. It can also be baked into a casserole-style dish like the classic bacalhau com natas with cod, cream, potatoes, and onions.

Christmas has never been widely celebrated in China. However, in recent years, people have started to adopt a Christmas ritual that you don't see in too many other places. That ritual is gifting apples to friends on or before Christmas Eve. The idea is that eating an apple on Christmas Eve will bring peace for the year ahead.

The most common explanation for why apples have become a Christmas Eve tradition in China comes down to language. Christmas Eve is called "ping'an ye" in Mandarin, which translates to "night of peace." Apple in Mandarin is "pingguo," which sounds somewhat similar. When you combine the two, you get "peace apple." It may have been a clever marketing ploy designed by someone or multiple entities trying to sell more apples, but somehow, this quirky tradition has endured.