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Will you be preparing Christmas Eve dinner this year? Does the mere thought of such an assignment throw you into a panic? This special meal is charged with the expectations, emotions, and the sentiments born from Christmases past. Your family and friends anticipate delicious food, served with Christmas spirit, love, laughter and good cheer. This is the meal you'd like them to recall, with fondness, many years from now.

How do you make this happen? The late Lee Bailey, who wrote many books and articles about food and entertaining, including the books Cooking for Friends and Soup Meals, insisted that great meals require little fuss, but a lot of style, great taste, and good, simple food. Your guests should feel comfortable, and you should reflect your unique style through your offerings.

Nora Ephron, well-known author and screenplay writer, recalls a dinner at Bailey's house in her hilarious book, I Feel Bad About My Neck. She said Bailey wasn't pretentious about entertaining, but he was stylish. He made people feel at home. He liked to serve the usual meat, vegetable, and starch, but "always added a 4th dish unexpected, like little crabapples, a casserole of lima beans and pears, peaches with cayenne pepper, or little biscuits." This 4th dish's purpose is to match and contradict everything else on the plate. This 4th dish makes the flavor of the other foods, combined with its flavors, pop to memorable levels. She said his guests always wanted to eat more, because both food and the company of friends was so much fun.

Your menu for Christmas Eve dinner should accomplish what Bailey's meals did. You want to pick a menu that matches your personality and skill level. The biggest cooking disasters come from trying to look like Emeril Lagasse when you've just learned to flip an egg!

A great resource for ideas and recipes is the Food Network. There you can find all types of recipes. They are labeled either "easy," "medium," or "hard." Even an Emeril recipe can be easy, so don't be intimidated. Pick recipes that match your style and ability level. When thinking about ingredients, consider your environment.

People in the Northeast, for example, often have Oyster Stew on Christmas Eve, because oysters are plentiful, and stew is warm and filling. This dish reflects home and tradition for them. In the Southwest, homemade tamales and Mexican food are delicious at Christmas. If you think about the types of good, fresh food unique to your area, you can design a meal around them and create new traditions.

Many people eat a big meal on Christmas Day, which should also be a consideration when choosing a menu for Christmas Eve dinner. Sometimes a delicious, hearty soup, French bread, green salad, and a sliver of cheesecake for dessert is delicious, festive, and easy on sensitive stomachs. Soups such as Creamy Leek and Potato Soup, Sausage Soup, White Chicken Chili and Oyster Stew don't have to be difficult to make and are warm and delicious.

A great salad is made with organic herb salad greens, spinach, tomatoes, colored peppers, carrots, black olives, avocado, cucumber, and dried cranberries. Dried cranberries is one of the ingredients that make the others pop! The salad ingredients look beautiful layered in a clear glass bowl.

You can buy bread and cheesecake at a bakery, if you wish, or use an easy cheesecake recipe called Cherry-O Cream Cheese Pie. It is best made with fresh lemons rather than bottled lemon juice.

Most of all, enjoy preparing Christmas Eve dinner. Don't worry if everything isn't perfect. What matters most is having a joyful time with the people you love. That's the legacy you want to create and your greatest gift to friends and loved ones this Christmas.

"The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it." Ralph Waldo Emerson

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