For the past few years, my family has sat down to Christmas dinner without a turkey or a ham, without mashed potatoes and dinner rolls and all of the Christmas fixings that are a staple on many holiday tables….

Instead, we’ve sat down to soup and sandwiches, and sometimes an assortment of appetizers.

So what led us to skip the traditional Christmas dinner and eat soup instead? Well, there were quite a few reasons that led to our decisions…

For one, Christmas is meant to be about spending time with family, about celebrating Christ, and none of us really felt the impact, the full weight, of Christ’s birth and our life as a family if we were slaving over a hot stove trying to get the turkey and sides and desserts and fixings all done at the proper time.

Not only that, but often, gift exchanges would be put on hold or paused for us to slide things into the oven, and oftentimes, it seemed that we just spent so… much… time… in the kitchen. None of us enjoyed a leisurely Christmas. Dinner was harried, stressed, and a little crazy. We went from stockings to dinner fixing to presents to dinner fixing to presents to dinner fixing to assembling toys to dinner fixing to eating to cleanup to bed. There was no… breathe. Relax. Enjoy. Pause.

That all changed when we changed our minds about what Christmas dinner should be. We decided to go with delicious, easy, affordable, and something that allowed us to relax. And that started our holiday tradition of soups and sandwiches for Christmas.

The day before Christmas, we put the chicken on and cook it. We also prepare everything for Christmas breakfast, and just do as much prep as we can. It still doesn’t involve us being in the kitchen all day, thankfully. The day of Christmas, we wake up, do stockings, enjoy a leisurely family breakfast, put the soups on, and unwrap gifts. After time exchanging gifts, we enjoy our lunch, already hot and ready, and then curl up on the couch and pretend to watch Christmas movies (I don’t know of a single person in our family who has stayed awake for a full Christmas movie yet!)

The point is… no stress. Minimal cleanup– we load the stock pots and crock pot and bowls into the dishwasher, and we’re done. It’s just so much easier now that we skip the traditional fare.

I don’t think any of us feel deprived by the loss, either. I mean, we’ve just had turkey for Thanksgiving, and during the season when ham and turkey go on sale, we go ahead and buy them. Sometime in January or February, we make the full holiday dinner– all the fixings– and we don’t have it interfering with our family time and our time spent enjoying Christmas, enjoying each other, taking naps, and giving to each other. We plan that for a day when we don’t have other plans, and can enjoy spending a day in the kitchen as a family– without the fuss.

I think that’s one thing that I love, that we’ve chosen to simplify. Often when you hear people talk about simplifying Christmas, they’re referring to the gifts, or the amount of Christmas celebrations they attend, or any number of things. But I cannot for the life of me remember the last time someone simplified when it came to Christmas dinner. I think many of us do it subconsciously, but I feel like we made the conscious effort to stop the stress. We no longer have to worry about seeing someone open the gift we got them because we’re dealing with a turkey, and we no longer have to deal with the extensive cleanup of a million dishes.

And that, truly, is worth so much.

What do you serve for Christmas dinner? Tell me in the comments below!