German Christmas Dinner Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is served at a traditional German Christmas dinner? ›

Treat guests to a traditional German Christmas dinner with classic dishes like roasted goose legs, braised red cabbage. and dumplings, and don't forget the mulled wine and platter of gorgeous, festive cookies.

Potato salad with sausages

This is indeed one of the number one favourite meals for a German Christmas Eve. One-third of the population serves potato salad with sausages. This perfectly demonstrates the saying that less, in this case, really is more.

In Germany, people use an Adventskranz, or advent wreath, with four candles on it to celebrate the four advents or the four Sundays before Christmas. On each of the four Sundays preceding Christmas Eve, a candle is lit. After lightning the first candle, the Christmas season officially begins.

Mulled wine is the main drink at the markets. It's so popular that many of the markets have special decorated cups for the wine. You pay a deposit for them and get it back when you return them or just keep the cup as a souvenir of your visit.

In Germany, the evening meal is called Abendessen or Abendbrot – the latter is actually more like a supper, and literally translates to 'evening bread'. Following a hearty lunch, Germans traditionally enjoy a lighter dinner, with breads, hams, sausages, cheeses, and pickles all being very common.

The term Weihnachtsmann is a very generic German term for Father Christmas, St. Nicholas, or Santa Claus.

According to folktales told in the Germanic area of Europe, Krampus comes to towns on the night before Saint Nicholas Day – the night of December 5^th this year. Typically, children leave their shoes out on their home's front porch on this night, because on St.

Apparently created to strike terror in the hearts and minds of small children — and quite a few adults, too — Krampus traditionally carries a ruten bundle, or birch rod, to whip those who have misbehaved and chains to bind those who have strayed from the straight and narrow.

What are German Christmas entrees? ›

With this complete German Christmas menu, choose your festive main dish adventure: Roast goose or beef rouladen. Then load up on the side dishes: braised red cabbage, spaetzle, and potato dumplings — they'll pair perfectly with either choice. And stick around for the Stollen!

Lebkuchen. This traditional German cookie is one of the most popular around Christmastime because it has those classic gingerbread flavors. The soft, chewy, and lightly glazed treats are a must-have for your cookie plate. Get the Lebkuchen recipe at A Beautiful Plate.

At the centre of a German Christmas evening spread you'll usually find a roasted goose, turkey or duck, traditionally served with lovely plump bread dumplings – the classic round ones, or one great big festive loaf-shaped one, known as a Serviettenknödel (pictured sliced, above), plus braised red cabbage or stewed kale ...

One legend has it that Queen Elizabeth I was gobbling up goose when she heard the British had defeated the Spanish Armada in 1588, ordering all of England to mimic her dinner at Christmas. The tradition then presumably spread from England to Germany, where it stuck.

Rather, Germans decorate their living room with wooden decorations like the Weihnachtspyramide (a wooden pyramid / windmill powered by the heat of candles), or dried fruit people (Zwetschgenmännla), dressed in scraps of fabric. The nativity scene (Weihnachtskrippe) is also popular among more religious families.