Christmas Menu Template

How to make a Christmas menu in five steps

1. Type the dishes. The five lines follow the order a Christmas dinner is served in the US and the UK: starter, main, sides, dessert, drinks. Rename any of them (“Appetizer”, “Pudding”), add a line for a vegetarian main or coffee and mince pies, or delete what you are not serving. Up to 12 lines fit.
2. Pick a title and date. “Christmas Day” fills in “Christmas Dinner” and the right weekday for the 25th; “Christmas Eve”, “Christmas lunch” and “Friendsmas” do the same. Then add “at the Millers’” or your own line.
3. Choose a format. Flat is a DL card (99 × 210 mm, 3.9 × 8.3 in) that lies on the plate or slips into a folded napkin, two per sheet. Tall (4 × 9 in) sits beside the cutlery, two per Letter sheet. Standing is a tent card that folds and stands on the plate, two per sheet. A5 and full page suit a wall, a buffet or the fridge door.
4. Add the guests. Tick “One menu per guest” and paste a name per line: 8 guests make 8 menus, each with its own name at the top, 4 pages of flat menus. Untick it to print one sheet and copy it as often as you need.
5. Download and print at 100% (“Actual size”, not “Fit to page”), on card stock if your printer takes it. Cut along the solid grey lines; fold a standing menu on the dashed line with the print outside.

Questions people ask

Is this Christmas menu template really free?

Yes. There is no sign-up, no watermark, no paid version and no “premium” design held back. The PDF is built by your own browser with every page you need and the cut lines as crisp vector lines; the PNG is the page on screen at 300 dpi, which a print shop can use as it is. Once the page has loaded it works without a connection.

Can I get the Christmas menu as a Word document?

Yes: “Word (.docx), editable” saves a real Word file, not a picture of one. Each menu is a table cell at its real printed size, the design (holly, gold frame, snowflakes) sits behind it as an image, and every word on top is ordinary text: the guest’s name, the title, the date and each dish. Fix a spelling, swap the dessert or add a guest in Word, LibreOffice or Pages, then print at 100%. Two honest limits: the text is set in Georgia, which every copy of Word has, so a long dish can wrap where the PDF made it a little smaller; and Word does not print upside-down text, so the back of a standing menu shows the design but not the words.

How do I open the menu in Google Docs?

Download the .docx, open drive.google.com, choose New → File upload and pick the file, then double-click it and choose Open with Google Docs. It converts in a few seconds and you can edit the dishes and names like any document. Google Docs keeps the text and the table sizes, but it sometimes moves a picture that sits behind text, so check the print preview before printing; if the holly drifts, print the PDF from this page instead and keep Docs for editing the words.

Do I need a Canva account?

No. Nothing here asks for an account, an email address or an app. You type the menu into this page and download the file. Canva’s menu templates are made for one menu at a time; the thing this page does that a design app does not is the guest list: paste twelve names and you get twelve menus, each with its own name, laid out on the sheets ready to cut.

How do I print a standing (tent) menu at home?

A standing menu prints on a strip 95 × 260 mm, twice the height of its face, with a dashed line across the middle. The top half is printed upside down on purpose: fold on the dashed line with the print outside and the menu reads the right way up on one side, while the back shows the design and title to the person opposite. Score the fold first with a ruler and an empty ballpoint pen. On 160 to 250 g/m² card (65 to 90 lb cover stock) it stands on its own all evening; ordinary 80 g/m² copy paper sags within the hour. Check that your printer takes card through the rear or manual feed tray.

What is a blank menu for?

“Blank menu” keeps the title, date, design and course names and replaces each dish with two ruled lines to fill in by hand. It suits a potluck where everyone brings a dish, a menu that is not decided yet, or neat handwriting in a gold pen. A line is about 7 mm (a quarter of an inch) tall on a flat card: enough for “Honey-glazed ham”, short for a whole recipe.

What should go on a Christmas dinner menu?

The page opens on a classic one you can keep or replace: butternut squash soup; roast turkey with gravy, cranberry sauce and stuffing; roast potatoes, green bean casserole and Brussels sprouts; pecan pie or Christmas pudding; mulled wine, eggnog and sparkling cider. Prime rib, honey-glazed ham, a salmon en croûte or a mushroom wellington for vegetarians fit the same lines. Naming a dish after its cook (“Grandma Rose’s pecan pie”) is the cheapest way to make a menu people keep.