Printable Christmas Grocery List

A Christmas food shopping list split the way the shopping actually happens: one sheet for everything that keeps, one for the fresh shop in the last few days, and one for the foil, batteries and bin bags nobody writes down. Sixty-eight items, every one editable, and there is no signup.

0 items

Shops to print

Each shop you leave switched on prints on its own sheet, so the one you are doing today is the only page in your pocket.

Your items

Every line is a suggestion. Type over it, delete it, or add your own — no two houses eat the same Christmas.

What prints

These are the sheets themselves, not a preview of them.

No printer? The same button saves it as a PDF from the print dialog.

A printed list helps whoever is holding it. Homsy, our app, is the version where the same Christmas list sits on everyone's phone, so the person already at the shop is the person who can add to it.

Your sheets, items and heading are saved in this browser. There is no account.

What is on the Christmas food shopping list

Sixty-eight items across three shops, before you change a word of them.

The early shop

Everything that keeps, bought two or three weeks out while the shops are still calm.

Columns: Item, How much, and a tick box for got it.

Store cupboard

  • Stuffing mix, or the bread to make it
  • Cranberry sauce
  • Gravy granules or stock
  • Pickles, chutney and olives
  • Crackers for the cheese
  • Christmas pudding or a pie
  • Mince pies
  • Tinned and jarred sauces

Baking and sweets

  • Flour, sugar and the baking bits
  • A tin of chocolates or biscuits
  • Nuts and dried fruit
  • Icing and cake decorations
  • Sweets for the stockings

Drinks

  • Wine
  • Beer or cider
  • Spirits
  • Mixers and tonic
  • Something for the drivers and the kids
  • Coffee, tea and hot chocolate

Freezer

  • Pigs in blankets
  • Frozen roast potatoes
  • Ice cream
  • Ice

The grazing days

  • Crisps and nibbles
  • Dips that keep
  • Cheese biscuits
  • Popcorn

The fresh shop

The last few days, once there is room in the fridge for it.

Columns: Item, How much, and a tick box for got it.

The centrepiece

  • Turkey, goose or the joint
  • Ham or gammon
  • A main for anyone not eating meat
  • Bacon for wrapping and for the sprouts

Vegetables

  • Potatoes for roasting
  • Potatoes for mashing
  • Carrots and parsnips
  • Sprouts or green beans
  • Red cabbage
  • Onions and garlic
  • Fresh herbs
  • Lemons

Dairy and chilled

  • Butter, and more of it than you think
  • Double cream
  • Milk
  • The cheese board
  • Eggs
  • Smoked salmon or whatever the starter is

Bakery

  • Bread rolls
  • Sliced bread for the stuffing
  • Something for Christmas morning
  • A loaf for the leftover sandwiches

Fruit and the bowl

  • Satsumas or clementines
  • Grapes and apples
  • Fruit for the cheese board

Not food, but Christmas needs it

The sheet nobody writes and everybody drives back out for on the day.

Columns: Item, How much, and a tick box for got it.

The kitchen

  • Foil, the wide roll
  • Baking parchment
  • Cling film
  • Tubs and bags for the leftovers
  • Kitchen roll
  • Dishwasher tablets and washing-up liquid

The table

  • Napkins
  • Candles
  • Crackers for the table
  • Matches or a lighter
  • A cool bag for what will not fit in the fridge

The house

  • Bin bags
  • Hand soap and a spare towel
  • Batteries for whatever arrives needing them
  • Sticky tape and spare wrapping paper
  • Whatever your house keeps in the medicine drawer

What is on the three sheets, and where the items came from

Three sheets ship with the list and they hold sixty-eight items between them. The early shop carries twenty-seven, in five sections — store cupboard, baking and sweets, drinks, freezer, and the grazing days between Christmas and New Year. The fresh shop carries twenty-five, in five sections — the centrepiece, vegetables, dairy and chilled, bakery, and the fruit bowl. The third sheet, the one that is not food, carries sixteen across the kitchen, the table and the house. Every item is editable, every item can be deleted, you can rename a section, add items and add whole sections of your own, and you can switch a sheet off entirely.

Nothing on these sheets is calculated, and one column is deliberately empty. The “How much” box ships blank on all sixty-eight lines because the quantity is set by a guest count this page does not know. Our printable grocery checklist can tier its quantities by household size, since a week of ordinary staples scales with the number of people eating them; Christmas does not, because how much you need depends on who is staying, how many days you are cooking for and how many people are eating the leftovers. Guessing a number there would be false precision, and false precision is what makes people stop trusting the rest of the sheet. The one number the tool works out is how many sheets your choices will print on, which is simply the count of the shops you left switched on — each prints on its own page.

The split into an early shop and a fresh shop is this site's own method rather than anybody's research: it is the two-trip rule already published in our Christmas dinner planner and scheduled on the countdown page of the printable Christmas planner. The sixty-eight items are our own judgement about what most households buy in December, not a survey of anybody's Christmas, and they exist so the page is useful in its first ten seconds rather than as advice about what to eat — the sensible first move is to delete whatever your family has never had. The white sheets on the screen are the printed sheets rather than a preview of them, so what you see is what the printer produces. All of it — your sheets, items, sections and heading — is held in this browser's local storage. There is no account, and clearing your browser data clears the list.

Every figure above was read out of the code that runs on this page. Where a number is our own judgement rather than a published one, the note says so and cites nothing. Method last checked 30 August 2026.

Why the Christmas shop is three lists, not one

The Christmas food shop fails in a predictable way, and it is not because anybody forgot the turkey. It fails because one list gets written, carried to one shop on one day, and that day is 23 December — when the car park is full, the shelves are stripped of the one brand of stuffing your mother eats, and the fridge at home has no room for what you did manage to buy.

Split by when a thing has to be bought and the whole job gets easier. Wine, tins, jars, crackers, the pudding, the frozen half and the snacks for the days between Christmas and New Year all keep for weeks, so they are bought two or three weeks out, calmly, and probably cheaper. The fresh half — the bird, the potatoes, the cream, the cheese — waits, because it has to and because there is nowhere to put it until the early shop has been eaten into. And the third list is the one nobody writes at all: foil, cling film, tubs for the leftovers, bin bags, batteries, candles. Every one of those is discovered missing at the exact hour every shop is shut.

The number that sets the quantities is not on this page and cannot be. It comes from the guest count, which is why planning Christmas dinner starts by getting a number rather than a menu, and why our free printable Christmas planner puts the menu, the gift list and a six-week countdown on three sheets beside this one. For the ordinary weeks either side of it, the meal planning generator builds a week and its shopping list together and the printable grocery checklist tiers its quantities by household size — which is exactly the trick that stops working at Christmas.

Two habits make any of these lists work, and they are both in how to organize a grocery list: group by where things sit in the shop so it is walked once rather than three times, and check the cupboard before writing the line, because the second jar of cranberry sauce is bought by somebody who never looked. December is also the month the food bill moves most, so it is worth knowing what the month can carry — the household budget calculator is where that number comes from, and planning Christmas gifts covers the other half of the same December total.

The honest limit of a printed sheet is that it exists in one place. Whoever is holding it is the only person who can see it, so the thing somebody remembered at work is not on it and the second jar gets bought anyway. That is the job a shared grocery list app does instead. Print these first — a list on the fridge in November beats a better list nobody set up.

Frequently Asked Questions

What should be on a Christmas food shopping list?

Three lists rather than one, because they are bought on different days. The first is everything that keeps and can be bought two or three weeks out: stuffing, cranberry sauce, gravy, crackers, the pudding, the drinks, the freezer half and the snacks for the grazing days. The second is the fresh shop in the last few days: the centrepiece, the potatoes and vegetables, butter and cream, the cheese board, the bakery. The third is the one that ruins Christmas morning when it is missing — foil, cling film, tubs for the leftovers, bin bags, batteries, candles, napkins. This page opens with all three and sixty-eight items on them.

Is this Christmas grocery list printable?

That is what it is for. The white sheets on the page are the printed sheets — not a preview of them — so what you see is what comes out. Each shop you leave switched on prints on its own page, with a tick box beside every item and no dark background eating your ink, so whoever is doing the fresh shop can be handed one page rather than the whole plan.

Can I download the Christmas grocery list as a PDF?

Yes, through the same button. Choose Print, then pick "Save as PDF" as the destination instead of a printer — every browser on desktop and phone offers it. There is no separate PDF download here because there does not need to be one, and a PDF built that way keeps whichever sheets and items you just chose.

Is there a free Christmas food shopping list template I can edit?

This is one. It opens with three sheets and sixty-eight items already written. Every item is editable, every item can be deleted, you can add items and whole sections of your own, you can rename the sections, and you can switch off a sheet you do not want. It is free and there is no signup.

When should I do the Christmas food shop?

In two trips, and the split is the reason this page has more than one sheet. Everything that keeps — drinks, tins, jars, the freezer half, the snacks — is bought two or three weeks out, while the shops are still walkable and the shelves still have the thing you wanted. The fresh half waits until the last few days, partly because it will not last and mostly because there is nowhere to put it until the early shop has been eaten into. The countdown page of our printable Christmas planner schedules both.

Why are there no quantities filled in?

Because we would be guessing. Our printable grocery checklist can tier its quantities by household size, since a week of ordinary staples scales with the number of people eating them. Christmas does not work that way: how much of everything you need is set by a guest count, by who is staying over and by how many days you are cooking for, and none of that is knowable from this page. So the "How much" column is a box you write in once you have the number.

Does the list save what I typed?

Yes, in this browser. Your sheets, items, sections and heading are held in local storage on this device, so the list is waiting the next time you open the page. There is no account, and clearing your browser data clears the list.

Related Tools

Keep the Christmas list on everyone's phone with Homsy

A printed sheet helps whoever is holding it. Homsy keeps one shared list for the household, so the person already at the shop is the person who can add the thing you forgot.