Oma's Traditional German Christmas Dinner Menu for Heiligabend and Christmas Day

by: Gerhild Fulson  / Oma Gerhild shares German recipes rooted in family tradition.

Most people who ask me about German Christmas dinner are picturing one big meal. In Germany, there are really two very different ones.

A festive German Christmas duck dinner served with potato dumplings and red cabbage.

Christmas Eve, Heiligabend, is the important evening. That's when the tree is lit, the presents are opened, and the church bells ring. Nobody wants to spend four hours standing at the stove that night, so supper is deliberately simple.

Christmas Day is when the roast comes out.

If you've only seen the picture-perfect version of a German Christmas, this may surprise you. On one of the most important evenings of the year, dinner is often nothing more complicated than sausages and potato salad.

The Simple Christmas Eve Supper

The classic Heiligabend meal is kartoffelsalat mit würstchen, potato salad with sausages. That's it.

Weiner with potato salad is a traditional German Christmas Eve meal, keeping Heiligabend supper simple before the festivities.

It sounds almost too easy to be a Christmas tradition until you understand the evening itself. The focus is on the tree and the family, not on someone spending hours in the kitchen.

Potato salad is also one of those dishes that benefits from sitting for a while, so it can be made earlier and left until supper.

Which potato salad appears on the table depends very much on where the family comes from. In northern and western Germany, you'll often find creamy kartoffelsalat made with mayonnaise and dill. In the south, the salad is usually made with vinegar and broth, with no mayonnaise at all.

Both belong at a German Christmas table. I make the creamy one.

For the sausages, gently simmered wiener or bockwurst are traditional. If you'd rather grill, here's how I cook bratwurst so the skins don't split.

Some families serve carp on Christmas Eve, especially in Bavaria and parts of eastern Germany. Others have soup and leave it at that. If you'd prefer something warm, a clear broth with dumplings is a lovely choice. My soup recipes are here.

The Christmas Day Roast

Christmas Day is different. Now the kitchen gets busy.

Roast goose is one of the classic German Christmas dinners. Goose can be difficult to find in North America, though, and when you do find one, it can be expensive.

That's why duck is such a good alternative. It gives you that same sort of festive roast dinner without cooking a bird meant to feed a much larger crowd.

My roast duck recipe is here, with crisp skin and gravy made right from the pan.

My roast Christmas duck served with red cabbage, potato dumplings and gravy, of course.

Rotkohl belongs beside it. The red cabbage cooks slowly with apples and has just enough sharpness to balance the duck. Make it the day before if you can. It tastes even better after sitting overnight, and that's one less pot to worry about on Christmas Day.

Then come the dumplings.

Kartoffelknödel are the potato dumplings many families serve with goose or duck. In Bavaria, you may be more likely to find semmelknödel made from bread. Either one does a wonderful job of soaking up gravy.

Choose one. Nobody serves both.

If duck isn't going to happen at your house, sauerbraten or rouladen work beautifully with the same red cabbage and dumplings. And yes, there should be plenty of gravy.

Another classic German Christmas dinner of sauerbraten served with rich gravy, red cabbage, and potato dumplings

The Full Menu, Course By Course

If you want to put the whole Christmas meal together, this is how I'd serve it.

Christmas Eve

• Start with creamy German potato salad or the southern version without mayonnaise.
• Serve it with gently simmered würstchen. Grilled bratwurst work too if that's what your family prefers.
• And while the tree is being finished, there can always be glühwein.

Christmas Day

• For a starter, serve a clear soup with dumplings. You'll find several choices among my soup recipes.
• The main course is roast duck with rotkohl and your choice of kartoffelknödel or semmelknödel.
• For dessert, bring out quarkstollen. Bread pudding with vanilla sauce is another good choice if you'd rather serve something warm.
• Later, with coffee, set out whatever is left of the Christmas cookies.

What To Make Ahead

Doing so much ahead is what keeps Christmas Day from turning into a scramble.

• About four weeks before Christmas, make the stollen. It's supposed to sit, and the flavor improves as it does.
• About three weeks ahead, make the lebkuchen. They soften as they sit, and the spices have time to mellow.
• During the final two weeks, bake the rest of the Christmas cookies and store them in tins.
• The day before, make the rotkohl. The Christmas Eve potato salad can also be prepared ahead so it's ready when everyone is hungry.
• On Christmas morning, put the duck in the oven and prepare the dumplings. They can wait in the refrigerator until you're ready to cook them.
• Twenty minutes before dinner, put the dumplings into simmering water and finish the gravy from the roasting pan.

Do that much ahead and Christmas Day comes down to one roast and one pot of water.

The Baking That Comes First

Homemade German Lebkuchen topped with chocolate or sugar glaze and finished with walnuts

German Christmas doesn't begin on December 24. It begins with the first Sunday of Advent, which in 2026 falls on November 29.

From then on, there's usually something tucked away in a cookie tin.

What I haven't made in years is a gingerbread “house.” When our boys were young, making one was a Christmas tradition, although calling it a house was sometimes a stretch.

One of my first gingerbread houses I made, over 50 years ago.

One year I made a fort. Another year it became a whole little village. I loved seeing how different we could make it each Christmas. Though, last year Lydia and I actually made a gingerbread house together, just for fun. 

The Christmas baking I don't skip are the following:

• Lebkuchen is a must, soft and dark with that familiar Christmas spice. 
• My quarkstollen which is always moist and stays that way
• Gingerbread cookies, either just iced or for the kids to decorate
• Spritzgebäck gives me an excuse to bring out the cookie press.
• Almond cookies or hazelnut cookies tucked into the cookie tins.

The whole Christmas cookie collection is here.

Then there's glühwein, which mostly exists to get people standing around a cold kitchen talking to each other.

Traditional German Glühwein, a warm spiced mulled wine served with orange and cinnamon

And Afterwards

German Christmas doesn't end on December 25.

December 26 is the second Christmas Day, zweiter Weihnachtsfeiertag. It's a day for leftovers and visiting family.

After that comes Silvester, and New Year's Eve has its own German food traditions. Here's what Germans eat on New Year's Eve, including the one thing you shouldn't serve.

If you're interested in the traditions behind Christmas Eve's celebrations, read about what it's really like in Germany here. You can also read about German Advent traditions here.

Frohe Weihnachten from my kitchen to yours.

Planning a German meal for another occasion? My German Meal Ideas and Menus page will help you choose.

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Hi, I'm Oma Gerhild! As a food writer and cookbook author, I'm always looking to find ways to pass on my German heritage using local ingredients. Quick and easy. That's my goal. Wunderbar food. That's the result.