Christmas Dinner Changes How Kids Feel About Eating Animals

Christmas dinner may play a central role in how children feel about killing animals for food. New research shows that kids as young as four change their moral judgments about eating meat when holiday traditions enter the picture, accepting harm they’d otherwise condemn.

Scientists from the University of Exeter and University of Bremen tested nearly 600 people between ages 4 and 85. When children heard that someone would eat a bird during Christmas celebrations, they found it more acceptable than children who heard the identical bird would be eaten on a regular weekday.

“Children between the ages of 4 to 11 years traded off their moral concern for other species against the cultural importance of human food practices,” the researchers wrote in Social Psychological and Personality Science.

How Holiday Meals Change Children’s Moral Judgments

The study presented children with a scenario involving a fictional bird called a “harven.” Some kids heard the bird would be eaten on a regular weekday. Others learned it would be consumed during Christmas dinner.

Children ages 4 to 7 rated eating the bird as far more morally acceptable when Christmas was involved. These young participants were also about 20 times more likely to bring up tradition and culture when explaining their reasoning.

Older children ages 8 to 11 showed the same pattern, approving of eating the bird during Christmas and citing traditions to justify it. The cultural celebration provided cover for an act they’d otherwise question.

Teenagers and adults, by contrast, found eating meat equally acceptable whether on holidays or regular days. The researchers suggest years of routine meat-eating may have normalized the practice for them.

Why Children Naturally Care About Animals

Children start life caring deeply about animals. Previous research shows young kids assign more moral value to farm animals than adults do. They believe these animals deserve protection and good treatment.

But somewhere along the way to adulthood, that compassion narrows. People learn to split animals into categories: pets who deserve love and farm animals who become food. Dogs stay family members while pigs turn into bacon.

Cultural rituals help teach children where to draw these lines. When families gather around holiday meals like Christmas dinner or Thanksgiving, children pick up on something: certain animal lives can be sacrificed for human traditions, especially during moments that matter to the community.

Even in a scenario set in Ecuador (chosen because British participants were unlikely to know the local customs), kids still treated celebration eating as more acceptable. The researchers note children may have simply applied their Christmas assumptions to the foreign festival.

Two Routes to Accepting Meat

Children appear to take two routes toward accepting meat. Special occasions like Christmas explicitly link meat with valued traditions, signaling that some animal lives can be sacrificed for cultural practices. Meanwhile, everyday exposure gradually makes meat-eating feel normal until it needs no special justification.

Young children lean heavily on that first route. They need the weight of holidays to override their instinctive concern for animals. By the teenage years, kids have traveled further down the second route, having eaten so many regular meat-based meals that consumption feels unremarkable.

From early childhood, kids pay close attention to what their community does. They want to behave the “right” way according to their group. When communities center meat-eating in important gatherings, children notice and adjust accordingly.

Holiday meals like Christmas dinner and Thanksgiving turkey do more than feed families. They teach that tradition can outweigh other considerations. When something matters culturally, different rules can apply.

Children in the study didn’t just passively accept eating the bird during celebrations. They actively defended it by pointing to tradition. This shows they understood they were making a trade-off, swapping their concern for the animal’s welfare for participation in something culturally meaningful.

The youngest children, ages 4 to 7, showed the most dramatic shift. These are kids who typically feel deep empathy for animals, who might cry at the idea of hurting any creature. Yet mentioning Christmas alone was enough to change how they weighed the decision.

Adults showed an unexpected twist. When they heard about the bird being eaten during a celebration, they didn’t find it more acceptable to eat but said it should be treated better beforehand. Adults seem to assign “special status” to animals consumed during important cultural events.

The researchers point to real examples like the U.S. president’s ceremonial turkey pardon before Thanksgiving. These rituals acknowledge the animal’s life as meaningful while still condoning its death. Some participants reasoned that celebration animals should be ethically raised and humanely treated right up until slaughter.

The researchers suggest that elevating plant-based foods during cultural celebrations might help establish new norms. Current traditions teach children that some animal lives are expendable for holiday meals. New traditions could teach different lessons. If Christmas dinners featured celebrated plant-based centerpieces instead of traditional meat dishes, children might develop different ways of thinking about food and animals.

The study focused on British children using Christmas as the celebration, which limits how the findings apply elsewhere. Different cultures have different relationships with meat. Some religious traditions like Buddhism and Hinduism emphasize vegetarianism. The researchers also used a fictional bird rather than familiar farm animals, which may not fully capture how children think about animals they know.

Still, the research shows how cultural practices shape what children believe matters morally. A four-year-old who objects to harming any animal can justify that same harm moments later if it serves a celebration she values. Christmas dinner does more than fill plates. It draws lines around whose lives count.