Every year, people ask me what it is like to have a vegetarian Christmas. What is it like? What do we eat? Do we have a traditional Christmas dinner or something more unusual? The purpose of this post is to illustrate what a typical meal might be for us at Christmas time, although we always eat something different year on year. My Mum always cooks for us, using a combination of recipes she finds leading up to the date and her own inspiration, as well as a few classics which come back time and time again.

I’m sharing here our Christmas Day and Boxing Day menus, although we also have special meals on New Year’s Day/Eve. I have not included the recipes as I did not make them myself, but I very much enjoyed eating them! Starting with our appetisers, we ate spinach and mushroom open ravioli with sweet potato. It was drizzled with a balsamic vinegar, soy sauce, and olive oil.

This was followed up by a delicious main course, consisting for the most part of a mushroom, chestnut, and ale pie with a stilton crust. It was accompanied by roast potatoes, a Yorkshire pudding, miniature vegetarian sausage, roast parsnips, carrots, mash, and the traditional Brussels sprouts. After this image was taken, we then added our own bread sauce, gravy, cranberry sauce, and apple sauce to taste.

This was a delicious meal, and extremely filling too. We had dessert later on in the day after we had digested enough to make a little more room! As you can see, a lot of the elements are what you would expect from any Christmas meal – the parsnips, Brussels sprouts, roast potatoes, mash, and pudding would be at home next to any turkey. The only difference is that we get to eat something different every Christmas, instead of having to eat that same turkey dish year after year!

Moving on to Boxing day, we started with a bowl of root vegetable soup. This was carrots, sweet potato, and parsnips, along with cream, garlic, and onion. This is a bit of a tradition for our family at this time of year after the first time we tried it, as it is always so delicious that it just cannot be missed.

Then it was time for the main course. This consisted of a fig, feta, and thyme tart with filo pastry. It was accompanied by celeriac mash, mashed new potatoes, carrots, a chestnut and cranberry stuffing ball, tomatoes, and roast potatoes in orange sauce. We added our own gravy and cranberry sauce as well. This was not quite as heavy as the Christmas lunch, as the tart was very light, but it was still enough to really fill us up for the afternoon.

Even if you aren’t able to create your own dishes like this, there are plenty of options that you can buy in supermarkets to replace the turkey – and the best news is that they aren’t likely to sell out before the holidays either. It’s very easy to enjoy a fully vegetarian Christmas, and it can be very rewarding too – bringing down both the cost and the calories of your Christmas meals.