Printable Christmas Planner
Three pages you can print: a gift planner with tick boxes for bought and wrapped, a Christmas dinner planner that records who is making each dish, and a countdown plan holding 25 jobs across the 6 weeks before Christmas Day. Every one of the 60 lines is editable, nothing is uploaded, and there is no signup.
0 lines
Each page you leave switched on prints on its own sheet.
Your lines
Every line is a suggestion. Type over it, delete it, or add your own — nobody's Christmas has the same list of people on it.
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.
Paper on the fridge is read by whoever walks past it. Homsy, our app, is the version where the gift list and the dinner jobs sit on everyone's phone and tick off as they get done.
Your pages, lines and heading are saved in this browser only. Nothing is uploaded and there is no account.
What is on the three pages
Sixty lines, before you change a word of them.
Gift planner
Who you are buying for, what it is, what it costs, and whether it is bought and wrapped yet.
Columns: Person, Gift idea, Budget, and a tick box for bought and wrapped.
Family
- Mum
- Dad
- Partner
- Eldest child
- Youngest child
- Brother or sister
- Grandparents
- In-laws
Friends and neighbours
- Best friend
- The friend you always forget
- Next door
School and work
- Teacher
- Secret Santa
- Someone at work
Stockings and spares
- Stocking fillers
- A spare gift for a surprise guest
Christmas dinner planner
The menu by course, who is making each dish, and whether it has been shopped for.
Columns: Dish, Who is making it, Notes, and a tick box for shopped and made.
Starters
- Soup or a shared board
- Bread and butter
The main
- Turkey, ham or the centrepiece
- Stuffing
- Gravy
Sides
- Roast potatoes
- Mashed potatoes
- Carrots and parsnips
- Sprouts or green beans
- Bread rolls
Sauces and extras
- Cranberry sauce
- Pickles and olives
- Butter and condiments
Dessert
- Christmas pudding or pie
- Cream, custard or ice cream
- Cheese board
Drinks
- Wine or beer
- Something for the drivers and the kids
- Coffee and tea
Countdown plan
Twenty-five jobs, each in the week it is least painful to do, from six weeks out to the day itself.
Columns: Job, Who, and a tick box for done.
Six weeks out
- Agree what you are spending and who you are buying for
- Ask who is coming and settle on a number
- Order anything that ships slowly
- Book the turkey or the centrepiece
Four weeks out
- Post the cards and parcels going overseas
- Buy the gifts you have already decided on
- Agree the menu and who is bringing what
- Check the foil, candles, batteries and wrapping paper
Two weeks out
- Post the rest of the cards and parcels
- Buy the drinks and everything that keeps
- Wrap whatever is already in the house
- Make up the spare bed and find the towels
The last week
- Collect the turkey and the fresh food
- Do the last grocery run
- Wrap the rest
- Write the cooking timetable, backwards from the meal
- Clear space in the fridge
Christmas Eve
- Lay the table
- Prep the vegetables
- Take the meat out in good time
- Fill the stockings
Christmas Day
- Start the oven on the timetable
- Hand out the jobs
- Sit down and eat it while it is hot
- Leave the washing up
What is on the pages, and where the lines came from
Three pages ship with the planner and they hold sixty lines between them. The gift planner carries sixteen, grouped as family, friends and neighbours, school and work, then stockings and spares, with columns for the person, the gift, the budget and a tick box each for bought and wrapped. The Christmas dinner planner carries nineteen dishes across starters, the main, sides, sauces and extras, dessert and drinks, with a column for whoever is making each one and tick boxes for shopped and made. The countdown plan carries twenty-five jobs in six groups, from six weeks out down to Christmas Day itself. Every line is editable, every line can be deleted, and you can add lines and whole groups of your own.
Nothing on these pages is calculated. There is no arithmetic to show you: the planner adds nothing up, scores nothing and recommends no budget, because a per-person figure that is right for one household is nonsense for the next one. The budget column is a box you write in, and it stays empty until you do. The one number the tool works out is how many sheets your choices will print on, which is simply the count of the pages you left switched on — each one prints on its own sheet so a gift list never runs on to the dinner page.
The sixty lines are our own judgement about what most households are actually doing in December, not a survey of anybody's Christmas. They exist so the page is useful in its first ten seconds rather than as advice about how to keep Christmas — the names in the gift groups in particular are slots to type over, and the sensible first move on the dinner page is to delete whatever your family has never eaten. The white sheets on the screen are the printed pages rather than a preview of them, so what you see is what the printer produces. All of it — your pages, lines, groups and heading — is held in this browser's local storage. Nothing is uploaded, there is no account, and clearing your browser data clears the planner.
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 23 August 2026.
Why Christmas is a paper problem
Christmas breaks households in a specific way. It is not one big job — it is four small systems running at once, on different clocks, usually in one person's head. Gifts have a budget and a deadline. The meal has a guest count and an oven. The cards and parcels have a postal cut-off. And the house has visitors coming. Any one of those is easy. All four, undocumented, is how people end up wrapping presents at midnight.
Paper is unreasonably good at this, and for one reason: it is visible without being opened. A gift planner stuck inside a kitchen cupboard is read by everyone who goes past it, which is what stops two people buying your nephew the same thing. A spreadsheet is read by whoever remembers it exists. That is also why the gift page carries a bought column and a wrapped column rather than one "done" — those are two different jobs, done weeks apart, and the parcel that is bought but not wrapped is the one that ambushes you.
The dinner page works on the same principle applied to labour rather than money. Writing the dish is menu planning; writing the name of whoever is making it is planning. Our meal planning generator handles the ordinary weeks and builds a shopping list with them, the printable grocery checklist is the sheet that goes to the shop, and planning Christmas dinner walks through the guest count, the oven timetable and how to hand dishes out without ending up with four bowls of the same thing.
The gift half has its own arithmetic, and it is the half people get wrong: a per-person figure that looked sensible in November is a number nobody set in December. Planning Christmas gifts covers the budget-per-person method and the hiding places that get forgotten, and the household budget calculator is where you find out what December can actually carry. The rest of the year's food and money routines sit in the meal planning guide.
The honest limit of these three sheets is the limit of all paper: they exist in one place, and the thing somebody thought of at work is not on them. That is the job a shared household app does instead — but print these first. A plan on the fridge in November beats a better plan nobody set up.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is this Christmas planner printable?
Can I download the Christmas planner as a PDF?
Is there a free printable Christmas planner template I can edit?
What should be on a Christmas gift planner?
What goes on a Christmas dinner planner?
Is there a Christmas planner template for Excel?
Does the planner save what I typed?
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Share the Christmas jobs with Homsy
A printed page helps whoever is holding it. Homsy keeps the gift list, the shopping and the dinner jobs on everyone's phone, so the person who wrote the plan is not the only person running it.