Over 27% Agree This Is The Best Main Dish To Serve For Christmas Dinner

On Thanksgiving Day, nearly all of us have the exact same thing for our big holiday meal, that being the time-honored turkey, of course. On Easter, we actually get a choice of entrees: ham or lamb. (Spam may also be an option, at least if you live in Hawaii). With Christmas, however, there is a much wider variety of traditional foods from which to select. If you're super old-school, as in "What would Charles Dickens do?," you may want so serve a roast goose (best accompanied by wassail, figgy pudding, and mince pies). If you are a fan of Japanese culture, a bucket of KFC's finest may be on the table. If you're in a Hispanic neighborhood, your local carniceria will have holiday tamales in abundance –- and if you're in New Mexico, you may even be able to get those tamales "Christmas-style," meaning smothered in both red and green chile sauces.

Too many options? Let us help. We narrowed down our top Christmas dinner picks to a short list of six choices and polled a panel of 613 to determine which of these was the favorite. Bear in mind, these results may reflect a certain amount of wishful thinking, since in this age of ever-rising grocery prices, some of the less expensive items lower down the list may be the ones people will actually be serving.

The top choice — meaning the item that people think would be best to serve for Christmas dinner — is something that may be out of budget for many of us this year: prime rib, favored by more than 27% of poll respondents. Cook's Illustrated says that prime-grade beef tends to cost around $17 per pound, while choice-grade costs $13 a pound. They say the prime grade is worth a few extra bucks, but they don't recommend shelling out even more for dry-aged meat.

Coming in a close second with just shy of 27% of the vote was a less-pricey pork product, baked ham. Roast turkey, which tops for Thanksgiving, drops down to third place a month later with only 18% wanting to see it on their Christmas tables. The budget pick, roast chicken, came in fourth with almost 12% of the vote, while roast beef, favored by over 9%, was down in fifth place. Last, though not lowest-priced, was roast lamb. Only 6% think this Easter-time favorite makes for the best Christmas dinner, too.