Christmas time is great for catching up with friends and family, and is normally accompanied by lots of different foods. It is a time for the chef of the family to shine. I have definitely had some delicious food during Christmas lunch in years past. For those who do the cooking, how long before Christmas day do you start planning what to cook? Also, when do you typically begin buying all the necessary ingredients and such? I can imagine it would be a lot of effort to plan and cook the meal, so I was just wondering how much time is normally dedicated to this.
I started planning mine as soon as Thanksgiving was over. Since my kids wanted to have turkey again instead of having ham for Christmas, I needed to get another turkey quickly. Too often, you can't find a decent sized turkey around here once Thanksgiving has come and gone. So, I got the bird right away. Good thing I still had room in my freezer from having the Thanksgiving turkey in there. Then I started picking up a few other things here and there while I was out Christmas shopping and such. I wait as long as I can to pick up fresh and perishable items, so those are usually my last stop. We're doing our big dinner celebration tomorrow, so for today I'll be making appetizers, relish trays, and desserts, plus marinading the turkey (I am resting right now, since I was putting the finishing touches on the housecleaning). Then I like to lay out the serving dishes and utensils I'll need, and try to get everything organized and ready to go ahead of time. Everything else, I'll leave until tomorrow. I'll get up early to let the dough for my rolls start rising, and I'll go from there. Yeah, it takes a lot of planning and effort. Much longer to prepare for it than to eat it.
I don't celebrate Christmas but the people who stay with me during the holidays do so since I'm a good cook they always need my help. Shopping for what will be eaten on Christmas day is done on Christmas eve. Preparation for the big day begins at around 3 PM on Christmas eve and from then on, we'll be cooking almost every hour for the next four days. All people ever do [here] is FEAST for as many days as they can so until 1st of January those who help with the cooking are kept quite busy.
I did not plan our Christmas feast but usually my family starts planning about 2 weeks in advance and if we're a bit lazy on any particular year then we'd move that to about one week before. Most of our dishes these days are just purchased anyway because it's just too much work to prepare everything at home and also there's too many options available now that it would only be practical to take advantage of it.