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How To Host Christmas Dinner

Two words: Christmas Dinner.
Some people love planning it, and for others it brings on a cold sweat!
Why is that – what are we so worried about?  Are we concerned we have to live up to childhood memories of an aunty who was the Martha Stewart of Christmas, or have a Pinterest-worthy banquet table?  Do the colour coded Christmas Stockings and enough lights for the Home Alone house elude you?

Here’s the good news – none of that is what Christmas dinner is really about.

So, here’s where to start – lower your expectations about how you do it, and raise your expectations about the memories you can create with some people. It’s about BEING family. Not about an award winning meal.
People talk about Christmas Dinner as though it is a time to put the walls up and have ‘just family’, close the doors and scramble for family time.  How about instead of ‘just’ family, we think of how to BE family.  Be family to those in your extended family, be family to someone who lives alone, be family to people who don’t have any of their own family living near them. 

I grew up in a Christmas-loving household.  Weeks were put into shopping, decorating and baking.  But no matter how much was planned, on the actual day my father would be sent back up to the church just as lunch was being prepared, to grab an extra table – or two – because my mother had collected guests along the way.  She would say “just put some more potatoes on”.  And she did.  And it always worked out.  In fact, it more than worked out.  Christmas dinner was a happy chaos of friends and family, new, old, and just-met-that-morning-at-church!  The day would continue with hilarious stories shared around the ever-extended table of people’s lives and memories of Christmas’s in their homes and travels all over the world.  Backyard cricket and swimming with brand new friends, and of course a long summer evening of chatting and hearing fascinating tales as we made our way through the forgotten desserts that had been discovered in the ‘spare’ fridge!

My mum passed on to me an understanding that no one would really remember what I cooked, but they would remember how they were made to feel. Being invited, welcomed and treated as family, on a family day, is a wonderful gift you can give to someone this Christmas.

Who have we shared our Christmas table with?  To think of a few – an American family that arrived in NZ to live just a few days before Christmas, that my husband randomly met and brought home for Christmas day – we recently received an invitation to their son’s wedding!  A young Korean family in our church who now come to our house every Christmas and we ended up becoming godparents to their children.  Our Navy cousin brings other Navy colleagues to our house for the day.  Last year after the huge meal, some brand-new South African friends lay down on the sheepskin rug in the sunshine and snoozed on the floor of our lounge while their children played cricket outside with the other 20 kids! 

So, back to the all important Christmas Dinner.  Easy. 

Choose what you love to eat at a celebration and make that. Invite others who are coming to do the same.  Last year we had a banquet of Kiwi, Chilian, Korean and South African favourites.  If you invite anyone else at the last minute, just ask them to bring some drink, or chips and dip.   Put some more potatoes on.  It will work out!

Decide on one time of the day for a big Christmas meal. We do lunch, and it takes most of the afternoon to eat!

Later in the evening, do a refresh of the leftovers and add a few new things to a cheeseboard. Tell everyone that now that lunch is over, they are welcome to help themselves for the rest of the evening.  Put the kettle on and enjoy chatting and lying in the sun.

Have a few things for little kids to munch on if they get hungry before or inbetween – ice blocks, sausages.  Kids get grumpy when they’re hungry, and nobody needs that on Christmas Day!

Paper plates. I’m whispering that. I have a love/hate relationship with them.  I want to give everyone a beautiful white plate for their meal, but I don’t want to wash them!  I’d rather have lots of happy people at my house than be worried about how to do dishes for that many people.  So paper plates it is.  With real knives and forks, for obvious reasons.

Let others help in the kitchen – that’s what family do.  You don’t need to do all the work yourself while others have fun in the lounge.  Bring the party into the kitchen.  Letting people contribute to cooking, setting the table, and helping with the hustle bustle makes everyone feel at home.  Ditch the formalities of having to ‘host’ it all. 

At the end of the night we all collapse into a happy heap of togs and towels, wrapping paper, left overs and Home Alone re-runs!  Sometimes the day brings along people who become life-long friends, other times they are just passing through and you share a fabulous day together – one that they might otherwise have spent alone or isolated from other family.  One day, in years to come, someone might be sitting at a Christmas table in a country far, far away, recounting the Christmas they spent at your home, and the way they were welcomed into your family and made to feel at home with you.  I pray that they would know the love of Christ from the time they spend in your home, that they would remember the joy of the fun antics and conversation and that they would know peace because they were cared for and nourished.

So throw the doors open – it’s Christmas time!

Author: Ps Krista Crawford

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