Our Annual Christmas Progressive Dinner: What It Is, Why We Have it, and How to Host Your Own
When my sister and I had both our own homes, we decided to start a new Christmas tradition with my parents: the Christmas Progressive Dinner.
While, at first glance, a progressive dinner seems as if it would be a dinner where we all get together and discuss the direction of politics, culture, and technology, the reality is less classroom and more community.
We use it as an excuse to get together during a very busy time of the year and stuff our faces!
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Updated 7/2022 | Written 12/2014
What is a Progressive Dinner?
A progressive dinner is where guests follow a set path through multiple homes or locations, eating a specific course or food offering at each.
It's a dinner combined with a party and a neighborhood tour!
For example, your group might start at one house for appetizers, move to another for cocktails, head to another for the entree, and a fourth for dessert.
Why Do People Host Progressive Dinner Parties?
While the process of organizing it can be a bit more elaborate than hosting a regular holiday party, it can be SO much fun. We try to out-do one another with new recipes, appetizers, fun drinks, and decor.
Part of my sister’s Nutcracker collection
It takes the pressure off of any one host to dazzle a group at the holidays, and allows several couples or families to share their hospitality.
I love our annual dinner. Not only do I get to skip cooking a full meal around the already busy holiday season, the set up of the progressive dinner means that everyone involved shares the load in exchange for a great meal.
That means we all are more relaxed.
In our family, my parents, my sister and her family, and my family all live about a mile from one another, so it's easy to bike or take the golf carts from one house to the next.
This year, we had an addition to the dinner since my grandma wanted in on it.
The great thing about the progressive dinner is that the group can adjust the number of stops to accommodate whoever is coming and/or wants to contribute food.
Progressive Dinner Ideas
The progressive dinner also doesn't have to be at Christmas, though that's when we we always host ours.
I've known other groups to organize one for Thanksgiving or Friendsgiving, which would be an awesome way to share the burden of cooking and walking off some of the calories consumed in a giant meal.
Other progressive dinner ideas could include a casual meal during the summer with a BBQ, during the fall and include s'mores by the campfire, or in early spring as a way to break up the monotony between Christmas and the warm weather.
The progressive dinner idea could also be done solo while you're traveling in a new city: go to one place for cocktails, another for appetizers, then sit down at a great restaurant for dinner, and end the night walking around town with an ice cream cone.
You could do a mini culinary tour anywhere you are!
What should you cook for a progressive dinner?
If you're doing a traditional progressive dinner, you'll definitely want to coordinate with the other members of the meal train since you don't want to have jarring flavors or competing culinary experiences so close together.
My dad helps himself to some 40 Clove Garlic Chicken in our portion of the progressive dinner
There are lots of fun ways to link a traditional progressive dinner together:
You could do an all-Moroccan theme and have a Moroccan Christmas like in The Office.
You could try traditional English Christmas food and return to the years of ye olde Henry VIII with wassail and mincemeat pies.
You could have nothing but appetizers and wine pairings.
It would be sweet to do a dessert and cocktails tour, where each house hands out bite sized bits of cake, brownies, etc.
What about a fancy take on the progressive dinner? Try a black-tie optional approach!
You could dress up in fancy clothes and parade through the neighborhood as you sample delicacies at each house.
Try this Charleston bread pudding recipe for an easy, delicious dessert on your progressive dinner!
How to Host a Progressive Dinner
My sister’s secret Christmas punch
If you're planning on including multiple houses where guests are staying just 20-30 minutes each, you'll want to consider how easy it will be to carry the food with them if they're not done.
Do you want guests to have finger foods?
Or, would you rather serve them small portions of many things over the course of the night?
Deciding on sit-down meals versus grab-and-go foods is an important distinction that you'll want to cover with all of the hosts involved.
>> Celebrate Christmas in Charleston with these fun activities! <<
A Sample Progressive Dinner Menu
For our Christmas progressive dinner in 2021, each household involved planned something inventive and unusual, but was still a recipe that blended well with the other recipes.
I should also note that we'd planned for our progressive dinner to take quite a while, which is why you'll note that the individual elements leaned towards the complicated.
Our theme was red-and-white, like a candy cane. We didn't end up sticking to the theme with our foods so much, but our houses were decorated so cutely!
This past year, my family kicked off the progressive dinner on the Saturday before Christmas.
Our menu included:
Appetizer (at my parents' house): Tossed salad with toppings bar and crab cakes, and Christmas punch cocktails
Entree (at our house): 40 Clove Garlic Chicken, which is not nearly as stinky as the recipe sounds, and is SO SO SO delicious.
Sides (provided by my grandma back at my parents' house): Mashed potatoes, sauteed green beans, and garlic/cheddar biscuits
Dessert (at my sister's house): Blondies and chocolate chip cookie sandwiches (with red M&Ms to fit the theme!)
I broke out my (small) Spode Christmas collection, and we ate dinner in style.
Christmas Progressive Dinner Tips
Work with the group of people involved to set the date.
Around the holidays, this can get a bit tricky since you're juggling office parties, school plays, and other gatherings.
The sooner you can set the dates, the better, so you can work around the Progressive Dinner with later plans, and not the other way around.
Keep the gathering small.
Since there are lots of logistics to consider when organizing something like this, you'll want to keep the group to 8-10 people or 3-4 families.
Any more than that, and you'll likely run into issues with space and timing.
Set the menu.
It's worth coordinating with the other participants, so you don't end up eating something with chicken in it four times in a row.
Be upfront with allergies, dietary restrictions, or food dislikes.
Between my shellfish allergy, my grandmother's dislike of anything that's not Southern cooking, and my sister's aversion to cream cheese and mayonnaise, choosing a meal is sometimes difficult.
But it can be done!
I usually make two possible menus, and then run both by everyone coming. It's usually pretty easy to spot the winning menu.
Send out an email or invitation with date, time, and dress code.
We usually keep things pretty informal since its just my family, but you could definitely choose to interpret the concept according to your group's vision. Just have fun with it!
You'll also want to include the specific addresses of each participating house along with approximate times that the party will be at each.
Have you ever hosted a Christmas progressive dinner? Do you have any fun recipes that I should try for next year's gathering?
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