German Christmas food

German Christmas food follows a calendar. Advent belongs to cookies, Lebkuchen and Stollen; Christmas Eve, the evening when Germans open their presents, is often surprisingly simple; and the big feast, in many households a roast goose, comes on 25 December. Bavaria adds a few accents of its own, from the carp ponds of Franconia to the stalls of Munich's Christkindlmarkt. Here is what ends up on the table, what the surveys say, and where to find our recipes.

A German Christmas food calendar

Christmas Eve: sausages and potato salad

Anyone expecting a lavish German Christmas dinner on the 24th may be in for a surprise. In a representative YouGov poll from December 2015, 26 percent of Germans said they eat sausages with potato salad on Christmas Eve, far ahead of any other meal. Meat dishes such as steak or schnitzel followed with 14 percent and roast goose with 9 percent. The habit was stronger in eastern Germany, where almost half of respondents named it, than in the west at 21 percent. The portal deutschland.de explains the logic: the meal is quick, so families can spend the evening on the celebration and the gift-giving instead of in the kitchen.

If you want to try it at home, our page on German potato salad shows how the Bavarian version is dressed with broth and vinegar instead of mayonnaise.

Christmas Day: the German Christmas dinner

For many families the festive German Christmas dinner comes on 25 December. According to deutschland.de, many households roast a Christmas goose, often stuffed with apples, onions and spices, and serve it with red cabbage and dumplings. How to make potato and bread dumplings, the two Bavarian classics, is explained in our guide to Bavarian dumplings. Goose season actually starts earlier, with the St. Martin's goose around 11 November, described on our German page Martinsgans.

Buying and cooking a goose

Verbraucherzentrale NRW, the consumer organization of North Rhine-Westphalia, notes that goose is in high season from November and that 85 to 90 percent of the birds in German supermarket counters come from Hungary and Poland. It recommends organic geese or the legally defined free-range labels, because force-feeding for foie gras and live plucking are banned in Germany but still practiced elsewhere. For food safety, Germany's Federal Institute for Risk Assessment recommends that food reach a minimum of 70°C (158°F) for two minutes or more, including at its core, so a meat thermometer in the thickest part of the bird is worth having.

Carp: the fish of the Christmas season

Carp has a special place in Bavaria. VerbraucherService Bayern, a consumer organization, points out that the traditional carp season runs through the months with an r in their name, from September to April, and that carp dishes are especially popular at Christmas, New Year's Eve and Easter. Of the more than 4,000 metric tons of carp raised for the table in Germany each year, almost half come from Bavaria, mainly from Middle Franconia, the Upper Palatinate and Upper Bavaria. Cistercian monks, who were not allowed to eat the meat of warm-blooded animals, helped spread carp farming across Central Europe.

In Franconia the fish is halved, dusted with flour and fried in deep fat; elsewhere it is poached as Karpfen blau, blue carp. Because carp has many fine bones, cooks score the sides at intervals of about five millimeters (roughly 1/5 inch) before cooking, a technique called schröpfen, or simply buy fillets.

Cookies, Lebkuchen and Stollen

Asked which Christmas treats they could eat all season, Germans in a 2025 YouGov survey named cookies first (17 percent), closely followed by Lebkuchen (16 percent) and Stollen or fruit bread (10 percent). Baking a batch of different cookies together in Advent is a cherished family ritual, and the tins are shared with guests or given away.

• German Christmas cookies: from butter cookies to Vanillekipferl, the buttery vanilla crescents, with a step-by-step recipe.
• Lebkuchen: honey and spice cakes, often baked on a thin wafer; deutschland.de calls them the most popular German Christmas bake.
• Stollen: a fruity yeast loaf, sometimes filled with marzipan, that originated in Saxony and goes back to the 15th century.

Christmas drinks

When YouGov asked Germans in 2025 to crown an official Christmas drink, 29 percent chose Glühwein, well ahead of hot chocolate at 15 percent. Sparkling wine and the flaming Feuerzangenbowle shared third place with 6 percent each, and 5 percent picked the alcohol-free Kinderpunsch. Our Gluhwein recipe includes a version for children. EU law sets the alcohol content of Glühwein at 7 to 14.5 percent by volume, so it is worth taking your time with it.

Eating at the Munich Christmas market

If you spend Advent in Munich, the market is the easiest place to taste the season. On the Christkindlmarkt on Marienplatz, the city lists Glühwein, punch and bratwurst among the classics, with vegan, gluten-free and lactose-free options as well. Dates, hours and other markets are in our guide to the Munich Christmas markets. For Bavarian cooking beyond Christmas, start with our overview of Bavarian food, or browse all topics.