Christmas in Vail: What Books First, What Is Open, and Where Dinner Comes From

Christmas through New Year is the Vail Valley's peak, and it books the way the best ski-in homes do: early and all at once. We cook across the whole corridor those two weeks, Vail Village to Beaver Creek. This is the guide we send families who ask how to plan it.

When Christmas week books

The best Christmas weeks for a private chef in Vail go by November 15, and New Year's Eve goes first. Thanksgiving and early December stay open longer. We can book closer than that, and often do, but a chef holding one multi-night residency cannot take another, and December has only so many nights.

What is open, and what is not

Vail Village and Lionshead restaurants are open through the holidays and booked solid for Christmas week. A party of twelve at eight below, shuttling through the village for a two-seating reservation, is the night most families regret. Shops and grocers close early on Christmas Eve. The households that skip the contest have the meal come to the house.

The traditions worth planning around

The tree lightings in Vail Village and Lionshead happen in early December, with carolers and cocoa. The Kris Kringle Market runs mid-December, a European-style Christmas market in the village. On New Year's Eve the torchlight parade comes down Golden Peak in the early evening, ski instructors in a serpentine of torches, followed by fireworks you can see from every base area. Dates shift a little each year, so check the town calendar once your week is set.

Where families stay

Ski-in homes in Vail Village and Lionshead, the big houses up Bachelor Gulch and Beaver Creek, and the down-valley homes in Edwards and Cordillera hold most of the multi-family Christmas weeks we cook in. Two or three households in separate homes, gathering at one table each evening, is the most common Vail booking. Check the kitchen of the hosting house before you book: a working oven, a full-size fridge and a table for everyone at once.

How the week runs

Breakfast before the lifts. Dinner after last chair, heavier on ski days and lighter when half the group has a village night planned. Christmas Eve is the anchor meal. New Year's Eve is a course-by-course dinner timed so nobody misses the torchlight parade. Kids' plates run alongside the adults'. Dietary needs are collected once across every household.

One chef, two homes, one table

A private chef in Vail arrives with the groceries, cooks in the hosting kitchen, serves the table and leaves it clean. One dinner or the whole week. The same chef covers Beaver Creek and down-valley, with travel inside Colorado built into the quote.

What it costs, all in

A private chef in Vail starts at $150 per person, all-inclusive. Most holiday dinners land between $150 and $250 a head, and a multi-night Christmas residency is quoted as one written number for the stay. That number covers the menu, the groceries at cost, the cooking, the service and the cleanup. Prefer the dinner delivered? Chef-made Christmas dinners come to Colorado mountain towns from $100 a person with a $500 minimum, cooked in our kitchen and ready to heat. Scenario numbers are in the private chef pricing guide, and the whole season is on the holiday page.

Booking checklist

Fix the dates. Send the headcount, the hosting home's location and the nights you want covered. A written all-inclusive proposal comes back within 24 hours, and dates are held once it is accepted.