December Christmas To Do List

• Fit in a Christmas market. December is peak market season across Europe and the UK. Our guide to Europe’s 20 best Christmas markets covers where and when to go (including a Lille day trip from London), and for one closer to home see our UK Christmas markets directory.
• The Elf on the Shelf arrives on 1 December. If yours is making an appearance, line up the month with our 56 easy Elf on the Shelf ideas — sorted by effort, with a free printable for the morning you forget to move it.
• Decide on the type of tree you are going to have, arrange the decorations and Decorate your Christmas tree with the family.
• If you haven’t made your own Christmas Puddings then I can highly recommend Figgy’s Christmas Puddings. They are the only commercial pudding I’ve tasted that really as good as a homemade pudding.
• Shop online to avoid the crowds on the High Street and for the best deals and choice.  If you haven’t already and normally shop online for your groceries then try and secure your delivery slot with your favourite supermarket now.
• Keep an eye on the last post dates.
• Get ahead on the trimmings. Pigs in blankets can be wrapped the day before or frozen raw weeks ahead — see our foolproof pigs in blankets recipe.
• Dress the table. Lay it the night before so the morning is for cooking — see our Christmas table decoration ideas for four colour schemes and any budget.
• Cook the ham ahead. A glazed gammon can be cooked up to two days before and served cold, freeing the oven for the turkey — see how to cook and glaze a Christmas ham.
• Choose your starter. Pick something light you can make ahead — see our easy Christmas starters to impress your guests.
• Cooking for a vegan? Plan a menu that works for everyone — see our ultimate vegan Christmas dinner menu and recipes. Cooking for a vegetarian instead? See our best vegetarian Christmas dinner menu and recipes.
• If a friend or member of your family have a birthday over Christmas think carefully and consider the correct etiquette – click here for our Christmas Birthdays guide.
• If you haven’t already agreed venues for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Years Eve and New Years Day with family and friends it’s best to get this agreed as early as possible.
• If you’ve been invited to dinner at someone elses stock up on some nice bottles of wine now.
• Make sure you have a list of everyone you need to buy a gift for and tick the names off as you buy the gifts.
• Got a teacher to buy for? See our guide to Christmas gifts for teachers that won’t break the bank — tasteful picks under £5, £10 and £15, plus the gift-card etiquette.
• Try and keep a few spare items at home which will make good last minute gifts for people you may have forgotten.
• If you haven’t already done so send out all your Christmas cards or tell friends that this year you will be donating the money that you would have wasted on Christmas cards, postage etc to charity and encourage them to do the same.
• If you will be entertaining then get cooking early.  Many items such as mince pies, sausage rolls and casseroles can be cooked in advance and put into the freezer until required.  If you put greaseproof paper between mince pies when you freeze them you can get a few out at a time and defrost them as required or warm them in a microwave and dust with icing sugar before serving.
• Make sure you buy your Christmas Crackers well in time for Christmas so that you have a good choice.
• Don’t forget to order your meat from the butchers and arrange a time to have it delivered or pick it up.
• Phone or video-call friends and family overseas. Free apps like WhatsApp, FaceTime and Zoom let you talk and video-call anywhere in the world from your phone, tablet or computer for nothing — a lovely way to share the day with those who cannot be with you.
• Plan for bad weather.  It’s likely that December will see the first snow of the year.  Even if it doesn’t snow it will be frosty.  Make sure you have salt for paths and plenty of de-icer for guests cars.   I also like to make sure I have candles and a torch at hand in case of power cuts.
• If you have Children at school you’ll probably have to attend events in the run up to Christmas.  Make sure you’ve got these on your calendar and planned well in advance to attend.
• Make sure you have all the wine and drinks you are going to need for the Christmas period.  Don’t forget to cater for the drivers by buying in soft drinks and fruit juice.  Make sure you know who is driving and be responsible and make sure the driver doesn’t drink.
• If you’ve made your own Christmas cake then you can use a cocktail stick and make a few holes in it and dribble on a little of your favourite rum or whisky.   Let these soak in for the week or two before you ice the cake.
• Think back to last Christmas or the last time you cooked a big roast lunch for all the family and consider if an extra shelf in your oven would have been useful.  Spare or extra oven shelves are available from about £5 on Amazon.  This simple addition can really take some stress out of cooking on Christmas Day.
• Need a last minute gift? Don’t be tempted to buy someone Gift Vouchers or Gift Cards. In recent years a number of large retailers have gone out of business early in the New Year making any vouchers or gift cards they have issued worthless. Even if they continue to trade many of the vouchers they issue have short use by dates and in many cases the retailer won’t give change for items costing less than the voucher value. My advice is to write them a cheque, give cash or even consider buying them a premium bond – as a bit of fun. See a blog I’ve written about Christmas Gift Vouchers.
• Got a Secret Santa to buy for? Pick something that gets kept, not binned, with our Secret Santa gifts under £10, £15 and £20 guide — funny, useful, foodie and alcohol-free picks at honest UK prices.
• Plan some quality time with the family and arrange some special treats for example:
  • Book an ice skating session at the Tower of London or Hampton Court
  • Visit the home of British wartime code breaking at Bletchley Park
• If your turkey is frozen, plan the defrost carefully — allow roughly 10 to 12 hours per kilo in the fridge, so a 5kg bird needs more than two days. Start it defrosting around 23 December for the 25th, and never defrost at room temperature.
• Write a Christmas Day cooking timeline, working back from the time you want to sit down to eat. See our guide to cooking the perfect roast turkey.
• Get ahead with the trimmings — bread sauce and cranberry sauce freeze beautifully, and you can prep the vegetables on Christmas Eve.
• Clear down and declutter the kitchen the night before, so your work surfaces are empty and wiped. You need a surprising amount of space to plate up eight or twelve dinners at once.
• If you have children, put together a Christmas Eve box — new pyjamas, a book and a small treat make a lovely tradition.
• If you have people staying, get the guest room ready the weekend before — fresh bedding and towels, some clear wardrobe space and a few welcome touches.
• Travelling? Get the car winter-ready — de-icer and a scraper, a blanket, some snacks and a check of your breakdown cover.
• Don’t forget the pets — stock up on their food and any prescriptions before the holidays, and give nervous animals a quiet space to escape a busy house.
• Stock a small medicine cupboard — fill any repeat prescriptions and keep cold, cough and tummy remedies and plasters in, as pharmacies close over the holidays.
• Put the bins out for the last collection before Christmas — collection days often shift over the holidays.
• Don’t try to do everything yourself — share out the jobs, and remember a warm, happy ‘good enough’ Christmas beats a picture-perfect one with a frazzled host.
• Don’t forget to try and relax and enjoy Christmas.
• And when it is all over: by tradition, Christmas decorations come down by Twelfth Night. There are two camps on the date — many count Twelfth Night as the evening of 5 January, while the Church treats 6 January (Epiphany) as the Twelfth Day. The older custom kept the greenery and the nativity up until Candlemas on 2 February, the formal end of the Christmas season in the Church calendar.

Pro Tip: Print this guide out and keep it somewhere handy like the fridge door in your kitchen so that you can check off these tasks as you get them done. 

Cooking a turkey crown this year? See our guide to turkey crown cooking times and temperatures for the per-kilogram timings and the safe internal temperature.

Bread sauce can be made days ahead, which is one less job on the day. See our recipe for proper homemade bread sauce for the infused method and make-ahead tips.

For the day itself, or the long afternoon after lunch, print our free Ultimate UK Christmas Quiz — 200 questions in ten rounds, with a children’s round and a fiendish expert round.

Not sure what to do with the day after Christmas? Read our guide to Boxing Day: its meaning, history and traditions — the honest story of the name, the bank-holiday dates, and what to do.

Leaving the cards late? See creative Christmas card ideas to make at home for quick potato-print and minimalist designs you can batch in an evening, and when to post them.

Pouring drinks this year? See our guide to 15 festive Christmas cocktails — classics, a batch punch for a crowd and proper alcohol-free options. For the creamy end of the evening, see our festive Baileys cocktails, from hot chocolate to a make-ahead cream jug.

Baking with the children this year? See our guide to how to make a gingerbread house — a from-scratch recipe that actually builds, a measured template, and an honest look at whether a supermarket kit is the better call.

Spend a wet afternoon on a batch of easy Christmas cookies to bake with the kids — one dough makes five different festive biscuits, and most of it is hands-off.

Hosting over the holidays? Our Christmas buffet ideas cover easy party food to feed a crowd, with a how-much-per-person planner for ten or twenty.

Baking the pudding yourself this year? Our easy chocolate yule log recipe walks through the no-crack rolling technique and can be made ahead and frozen.

For an edible gift or a slice with the morning coffee, see our stollen recipe and guide, including make-ahead, freezing and vegan options.