Christmas dinner, planned: the menu, the quantities and a December 20 to 25 timeline

The short version

• Count 3/4 lb of bone-in ham or 1 lb of bone-in rib roast per guest. For eight people that is a 6 lb ham (8 to 10 lb if you want sandwiches on the 26th) or a four-rib roast.
• A fully cooked spiral ham only needs reheating, about 10 minutes per pound at 325°F until the center reads 140°F, according to USDA FSIS. An 8 lb ham spends under an hour and a half in the oven.
• Cooked food keeps 3 to 4 days in the fridge (USDA), so cranberry sauce made on December 22 is still well inside the window on Christmas Day.
• Plan two shopping trips: pantry, drinks and baking on the 21st, then produce, dairy, bread and the meat on the 23rd.
• When the platters have been on the table for 2 hours, they go in the fridge or the trash. That is the USDA limit for perishable food at room temperature.

Start with the menu, not the recipes

The menu drives everything after it: the list, the oven schedule, how many platters you need, who sits where. A Christmas table in the US usually carries one centerpiece, one potato dish, one or two vegetables, bread, something sharp to cut the richness (cranberry, horseradish cream, a mustard glaze) and dessert. For eight people, five or six dishes is plenty. The seventh is the one that eats your afternoon.

Plenty of families skip turkey at Christmas because they carved one four weeks earlier, which is why ham and beef take over in December. Choose the main by your oven, not by the magazine cover. A spiral ham reheats gently and frees the oven early. A standing rib roast wants a thermometer, a long rest on the board, and the oven to itself until the very end.

If your big meal is Christmas Eve

In many Italian-American families the main event is the Feast of the Seven Fishes on December 24; in many Mexican-American homes it is tamales, often made together in a long afternoon the weekend before. The plan below still works: slide every day one step earlier, so the second shopping trip lands on the 22nd and the make-ahead work on the 23rd. Christmas Day then becomes the easy day, with leftovers and a ham sandwich.

How much food per guest

Buying by the head beats buying by eye. The numbers below assume adults, one main and three or four sides. For a self-serve buffet, add 10 to 15 percent, the margin The Old Farmer’s Almanac party planner recommends.

Where the numbers come from

The ranges for turkey, ham, potatoes, vegetables and rolls follow The Old Farmer’s Almanac party planner, which puts cooked ham or roast beef at 6 to 8 ounces per person; bone-in cuts need more raw weight because the bone is part of what you pay for. The rib roast line is the rule most butcher counters give, two guests per rib. The wine line uses the NIAAA standard drink: 5 ounces of wine at 12 percent alcohol, which puts five glasses in a 750 ml bottle.

Order a standing rib roast or a specialty ham in the first half of December. The week before Christmas is when butcher counters run short on the big cuts, and you want the right size, not what is left.

The December 20 to 25 timeline

In 2026 Christmas falls on a Friday, so the week lines up neatly: decisions on Sunday, shopping on Monday and Wednesday, cooking on Wednesday and Thursday. The idea is to never have more than about two hours of work on any one day before the 25th.

Christmas Day, hour by hour (ham menu, dinner at 5 pm)

• 1:00 pm. The scalloped potatoes come out of the fridge to lose their chill. Oven to 325°F.
• 1:45 pm. Potatoes in, covered with foil.
• 3:15 pm. The ham goes in on the lower rack, cut side down, wrapped in foil. At roughly 10 minutes per pound, 8 lb means about 80 minutes.
• Around 4:30 pm, check the center of the ham with the thermometer. At 140°F, brush on the glaze and give it 10 minutes uncovered; uncover the potatoes at the same time.
• 4:40 pm. Ham and potatoes out, oven up to 425°F, Brussels sprouts in for about 20 minutes. Dress the salad.
• Rolls go in for the last 5 minutes while someone carves.
• 5:00 pm, dinner.
• By 7:00 pm, leftovers are in shallow containers in the fridge. The 2-hour clock started when the food hit the table, not when people stopped eating.

What to make ahead, and what to leave for the day

The USDA puts cooked leftovers at 3 to 4 days in the fridge. Treat that as the edge of your make-ahead window: anything cooked before December 21 should come out of the freezer, not the back of the fridge.

The grocery list by aisle, for 8 guests

This is the list for the glazed ham table above, built from the per-guest quantities. Pantry basics such as salt, pepper, flour and oil are assumed; check them on Sunday the 20th rather than in the store on the 23rd.

Food safety on the day

A holiday meal stretches out. People graze, go back for seconds, open presents, come back for pie. USDA FSIS guidance is simple: perishable food should not sit at room temperature for more than 2 hours. On a buffet, hot dishes stay at 140°F or above and cold ones at 40°F or below; set out small platters and replace them, rather than topping up one big dish that has been out since 5 pm.

The thermometer settles every argument. A ham packaged in a USDA-inspected plant reheats to 140°F; leftover or repackaged ham goes to 165°F. Beef roasts reach the USDA minimum of 145°F followed by a rest of at least 3 minutes, and turkey needs 165°F. Spiral ham leftovers keep 3 to 5 days in the fridge or 1 to 2 months in the freezer. Other leftovers keep 3 to 4 days chilled and 3 to 4 months frozen for best quality, and they get reheated to 165°F.

Keep the ham bone. Frozen, it waits for the pot of black-eyed peas many Southern families cook on January 1, which is where our New Year’s Eve dinner and January 1 guide picks up.

How to plan Christmas dinner in Olivi

Paper works, and the Christmas dinner planner (PDF) prints on US Letter: page one is blank, with boxes for the menu, guests, the list by aisle and the December 20 to 25 timeline; page two is the ham dinner for eight filled in; page three is a cheat sheet with quantities for 4 to 12 guests, the USDA reheating and roasting times for ham, rib roast and turkey, and the oven plan for a 5 pm dinner. If you would rather the list write itself, Olivi does the arithmetic.

Ask Olive, the virtual cooking coach in Olivi, something like “Christmas dinner for 8 on December 25, ham, one guest is gluten-free, dessert made the day before.” She proposes the dishes and adds them to your plan; any meal can be moved to another date, so Christmas does not have to sit in the current week. Set each recipe to 8 servings and the quantities recalculate. The grocery list builds itself from those dishes, sorted by aisle, and you can share it by link with whoever is doing trip 2: they check items off in real time, no account needed. In the store, shopping mode works without a signal.

Grandma’s pecan pie card can come along too: scan the paper recipe and Olive turns the handwriting into a recipe you can plan and scale. On the 25th, cooking mode shows one step at a time with built-in timers, so the ham and the potatoes each keep their own countdown.