50 Common English Christmas Vocabulary Words

All over the world, Christmas is a time to exchange presents, be with family and loved ones, and have fun.

Christmas, also known as Xmas, means good food, decorated homes and thoughtful presents.

It also means a lot of new English vocabulary, some of which is only used during this season.

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50 English Christmas Words You Should Know

How Christmas is Celebrated

Christmas decorations

One fun thing about Christmas is putting up the decorations, which are pretty items you put around the house or outside to make your home look pretty.

Decorations are also called ornaments or baubles. One of the most common Christmas ornaments are shiny ball-shaped decorations that you hang from the tree branches. Ornaments shaped like snowflakes and snowmen, both things made of snow, are also very common.

After you hang all the ornaments, it’s time to put the tinsel on the tree. Tinsel is long strings of shiny strips of foil. They’re usually silver, red or gold, and they look beautiful when the light reaches the fluffy foil!

Christmas stockings are hung up near the tree as well. Every family member gets one stocking, which is shaped like a large sock. Small gifts can be placed inside, like candy or small toys. These small gifts are called stocking stuffers, because they’re stuffed (put) in stockings.

The tree is not the only bit of nature people bring into their homes for the holidays. Three traditional Christmas plants are holly, poinsettias, and mistletoe. All three come in the colors of Christmas: green and red.

Holly and poinsettias are used just as decorations, but mistletoe has a special meaning. Hang one somewhere high, and any two people who stand under the mistletoe together must kiss!

On the outside of your home, you can put lights on your windows or a wreath on your door. A wreath is a round decoration usually made with leaves and other natural objects like pinecones and flowers.

You can even decorate yourself by putting a garland around your neck. A garland is a cord that—like a wreath—is made of twigs, leaves and flowers, though these are usually fake.

Giving and getting gifts

Christmas is all about showing goodwill, friendly and kind feelings towards others. You don’t want to be someone mean and greedy like Ebenezer Scrooge from the story “A Christmas Carol.”

Christmas is the time to exchange, or give and receive, presents, which are things that you give to others as a gift. You hand over the present to the person and you wish them a merry, happy Christmas.

To get your presents ready, you have to cover them in wrapping paper, which is special decorative paper that hides your gift.

Finally, you finish by putting a ribbon around it, or a strip of fabric or fabric-like material. This makes the whole present fun to unwrap, or open, for the person who gets it!

Santa Claus

When you were a child, you might have believed in Santa Claus, a fat man who lives in the North Pole (the northern part of the world). He’s also known by the name Kris Kringle in the United States.

Santa wears a red coat, pants and hat, and gives out presents on Christmas Eve (the day before Christmas) to children around the world. Santa is a jolly man, which means he’s very happy and friendly!

Of course, even if he isn’t real, Santa can’t do all that on his own. Little magical people called elves help him make all the toys and other presents.

When it’s time to go deliver the presents, Santa puts them in a sack, a very large bag usually made from thick fabric.

According to the story, Santa rides in a sleigh, a special vehicle which is made to be pulled by animals through the snow. Sleighs are real vehicles, but Santa’s sleigh is magical—it can fly!

To pull the sleigh, Santa uses deer-like animals with antlers (long, branch-like horns) called reindeer. Some people think reindeer are imaginary animals created for the Santa story, but they’re real animals!

These days many people live in apartments, so it’s harder to explain how Santa gets into homes. But many private homes have chimneys, square pipes which let out the smoke from a fireplace (or a kitchen). Santa uses chimneys to get into homes. How does he fit his fat stomach and big sack through a thin chimney? It’s magic!

Traditional Christmas food and drinks

Traditional Christmas food and drinks are different around the world. In America, there’s a big focus on things that make you feel warm, like hot drinks and spices. Many places have a feast—a large meal eaten in celebration.

Many traditional foods are sweet treats. Gingerbread cookies are made from sweet, sticky molasses and ginger root. Fruitcake is a bread-like cake with candied, dried fruits. If you don’t like fruitcakes, you might prefer a Christmas pudding, which is a creamy brown dessert that uses nuts, raisins and sometimes cherries.

Candy canes are candy sticks curved on the end like a walking stick, and they usually have red and white stripes. These days candy canes come in many different flavors, but traditionally they taste like peppermint, a type of mint plant with a very fresh smell and taste.

In the United Kingdom, another favorite Christmas treat is the mince pie, a small pie made from dried fruit, spices and sometimes cut up meat (“mince” means to cut up meat into very small pieces).

Christmas has some special drinks too, like eggnog, which is made with egg and cream (you either love it or you hate it!). Another common drink is apple cider, a thick apple juice that’s usually served warm with spices like nutmeg and cinnamon. Both eggnog and apple cider can be mixed with alcohol for extra warmth.

Spending time with the family

Of course, the best part of Christmas isn’t the delicious food or the awesome presents…it’s spending time with your family and people you care about. Families come together on Christmas to enjoy the festivities together, meaning to celebrate the happy holiday.

Some families go caroling, which is when you sing traditional Christmas songs (called “carols”) to other people to make everyone feel happier.

Christmas sometimes lasts longer than just a night and a day, with the use of an advent calendar. This is a special religious calendar that can show 12 days or even as much as a month. Each day you open a tiny flap, which shows a special picture or activity.

Sometimes the best time you can have, though, is sitting with the whole family in front of a fireplace, a special area in a house where you can have a fire indoors. Even if you don’t have a fireplace, today you can watch the burning of a special Christmas yule log on TV or even online.

Christmas in Different Cultures

People celebrate Christmas all over the world! Christmas celebrations are not all the same, though. Every culture and place has a different way of enjoying the holiday and different traditions (customs passed down from generation to generation).

For people of the Christian faith, Christmas is a celebration of the nativity, the birth of Jesus Christ. They may go to church before or on Christmas day.

In some cultures, the holiday is secular (something that is not religious).

For instance, my own family is Jewish, but we’re from Ukraine. We celebrate Christmas on New Year’s Day or sometimes even on January 7—because that’s a Slavic tradition. My husband, however, is from Peru, so they greet the Christmas Day at midnight of Christmas Eve, and open presents that night. Between both of our holiday traditions, we have a Christmas tree up for almost a month!

In Germany, people dressed as Saint Nicholas (the saint that Santa Claus is based on) visit schools, where children say a poem or sing a song to get small gifts or sweets. In Sweden, almost half of the country watches the Donald Duck Christmas movie on Christmas Eve, since it’s played on TV at 3 p.m.

As you can see, Christmas celebrations are very different around the world!

How to Memorize Christmas Vocabulary

There are a few ways you can memorize Christmas vocabulary in a fun and exciting way (even if it’s not Christmastime).

My favorite resources are:

• Christmas songs, like We Wish You a Merry Christmas and Let It Snow
• Christmas books and stories, like How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss
• Christmas movies and shows, like A Charlie Brown Christmas and Klaus

Keep in mind that there are also full Christmas expressions and phrases as well that you should learn.

Any native English Christmas-related resource can help you, whether it’s text, audio or video. If you’d like some extra help on learning Christmas words and expressions in context, you can also use FluentU.

FluentU takes authentic videos—like music videos, movie trailers, news and inspiring talks—and turns them into personalized language learning lessons.

You can try FluentU for free for 2 weeks. Check out the website or download the iOS app or Android app.

P.S. Click here to take advantage of our current sale! (Expires at the end of this month.)

 

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Now you’re all warmed up and ready to celebrate Christmas… in English. Enjoy the holidays!

Download: This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that you can take anywhere. Click here to get a copy. (Download)

And One More Thing...

If you like learning English through movies and online media, you should also check out FluentU. FluentU lets you learn English from popular talk shows, catchy music videos and funny commercials, as you can see here:

If you want to watch it, the FluentU app has probably got it.

The FluentU app and website makes it really easy to watch English videos. There are captions that are interactive. That means you can tap on any word to see an image, definition, and useful examples.

FluentU lets you learn engaging content with world famous celebrities.

For example, when you tap on the word "searching," you see this:

FluentU lets you tap to look up any word.

Learn all the vocabulary in any video with quizzes. Swipe left or right to see more examples for the word you’re learning.

FluentU helps you learn fast with useful questions and multiple examples. Learn more.

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Start using the FluentU website on your computer or tablet or, better yet, download the FluentU app from the iTunes or Google Play store. Click here to take advantage of our current sale! (Expires at the end of this month.)