Christmas Fruit Salad is a tasty blend of winter fruits and summer berries. Top this holiday fruit dish off with our Orange Honey Dressing. A delicious and sweet recipe that’s so healthy and good for you too!

 

Even though winter is definitely the season for comfort foods and rich, hearty meals like stews and roasts, you should definitely leave some room for fruit like this Christmas Fruit Salad. There’s plenty of delicious winter fruits that you can snack on or throw into recipes to help get a bit of fruity sweetness into recipes or satisfy a sweet-tooth in a little bit of a healthier way.

One of the easiest ways to get a bunch of extra fruit into your diet is to make up some sort of Winter Fruit Salad or my Creamy Grape Salad. For a bit of extra holiday flair, we decided to whip together this Red and Green Fruit Salad!

At it’s core, this Fruit Salad for Christmas is pretty similar to your plain ole Winter Fruit Salad recipes. It’s built up around some classic winter fruits like apples, pears, and some kiwi fruits. But, to get some holiday colors and some extra flavor in there, we threw in some strawberries and raspberries- two classic summer berries. They really add a lot of color to what would be a pretty standard Christmas Fruit Bowl for your holiday table.

Another little add-in that brings a lot to the dish is a simple light Honey Orange Dressing. It’s a quick blend of honey and orange juice that adds some sweetness and a little citrus tang over the whole fruit salad. Whether you want to serve this up as a Christmas Dinner Fruit Salad or a Christmas Brunch Fruit Salad, we’re certain it’ll be a crowd pleaser! We’re sure it’s the Best Fruit Salad for Christmas you’ll find this year.

Why you’ll love this Easy Christmas Fruit Salad recipe

• Like our Thanksgiving Fruit Salad and Red White and Blue Fruit Salad recipes, this is another easy way to get some sweet fruits on the table during a holiday. The holidays doesn’t need to be all pot roasts, stews, and cookie recipes- fruits are so tasty too!
• Our Christmas Fruit Salad is built around fruits and ingredients anyone could get their hands on. A quick trip to the supermarket or grocery store will cover everything- you can even use frozen fruits in a pinch!
• There’s plenty of room to customize the salad, take out certain ingredients, or add other ingredients in. Don’t like our Orange Honey Dressing? Drop it or replace it with a different dressing altogether. Throw in some nuts or dried fruits too- go crazy!

Christmas Fruit Salad Ingredients

Our Red and Green Christmas Fruit Salad uses a tasty winter fruit medley- plus a couple summer berries for some contrast and color. Paired with a 2-ingredient salad dressing, you’ve got a pretty simple and short ingredients list. Here’s all you need:

• Apples – We went with some Granny Smith Green Apples. They’re a nice bright green color which is going to pair well with some other green fruits and our red berries.
• Pears – Do you need to core pears? Not really: eating the core is perfectly fine. It also saves us some time since we can get right to slicing them.
• Kiwi Fruit – Make sure you peel your Kiwis. The skins don’t look good in our finished salad and the texture obviously isn’t great.
• Grapes – Green grapes, naturally.
• Strawberries – Strawberries are technically more of a spring and summer fruit. Thankfully, grocery stores and supermarkets are able to stock them year-round!
• Raspberries – Again, raspberries are technically a summer fruit but you can get them year-round.
• Pomegranate Arils – A lot of grocery stores will actually sell these in little cups or containers. Saves us a bunch of time, not having to get the seeds from the fruits themselves. So tasty too: just bursting with sweet-and-sour flavor!

For our Christmas Fruit Salad Dressing, you’ll only need two ingredients:

• Orange Juice
• Honey – For best results and flavor, make sure you’re using real honey here! A lot of honey you’ll find in stores is mixed with syrups and other extra ingredients and doesn’t taste as good.

See recipe card for quantities.

How to make Fruit Salad for Christmas

Making our Christmas Fruit Salad is a lot like making any other festive fruit salad recipe. Here’s what you’ll do:

1. Remove apple cores, hull strawberries, and peel kiwifruits. Cut grapes into halves and then cut apples, pears, kiwis, and strawberries into bite-sized pieces.
2. Add fruits to a large mixing bowl and give a light stir to combine. We do not want to crush the raspberries to much. Optionally transfer to a separate glass serving bowl.
3. In a spouted measuring cup or small mixing bowl, combine the orange juice and honey. Mix well to combine before drizzling evenly over top the fruit salad when ready to serve.

Substitutions

This Christmas Fruit Salad is pretty simple and we’re sure you can find all these ingredients at your local grocery. In case you can’t, here’s some quick substitutions you can make:

• Apples – Granny Smith apples seem like the perfect apple for a Holiday Fruit Salad: they’re crisp, sweet and tart, and green. There are other good apples for fruit salad though- especially if you want something red. Try using Honeycrisp red apples, Fuji apples, or Pink Lady apples next time.
• Strawberries and Raspberries – If you’re having trouble sourcing fresh strawberries or raspberries during winter, going with frozen could work. The problem with frozen fruits in salad is that they tend to get “mushy” after they thaw. Carefully thaw and drain off any excess liquids if you’re planning on using frozen raspberries or strawberries in this recipe.
• Orange Juice – We just used some store-bought orange juice for this recipe: it seemed like the easiest choice. Of course, you can also use freshly-squeezed orange juice or even make some orange juice from concentrate. It’s for a salad dressing though, so try to minimize the pulp if you can.

Variations

We loved this Christmas Fruit Salad but even we know there’s a few ways you can mix it up or some extra ingredients you can toss in! Here’s a few ideas you can give a try next time:

• Christmas Salad with Nuts and Raisins – If you don’t mind leaving the “Red and Green Christmas Fruit Salad” idea behind, you can add in some other ingredients. Two other really popular add-ins for winter fruit salad recipes are nuts- usually pecans- and dried fruits- raisins especially.
• Christmas Creamy Fruit Salad – If you’re a big fan of dessert salad recipes, you can easily sweeten this recipe up by just swapping out the dressing. Check out our Creamy Fruit Salad recipe for a quick cream cheese and yogurt salad dressing that you could use to top our Christmas Fruit Salad with.
• Mexican Christmas Salad – Another popular spin on this recipe we found was something called ensalada navienda. It uses a special dressing made from cream cheese, yogurt, sweetened condensed milk, and evaporated milk. Sneak a bit of shredded coconut and some mini marshmallows into the salad too if you’d like!

Storage / Freezing

Storage: If you’ve got any leftover Fruit Salad, you’ll want to put it into an airtight resealable container and move it to the fridge. If you’re keeping your fruit salad in the fridge, it’ll be safe to eat for 4-5 days but will have the best texture and taste if you enjoy in 2-3 days.

Freezing: Freezing fruit salad is also an option, but defrosting will probably affect the texture down the line. For best results, try patting your fruits really dry and freezing on a parchment-lined baking sheet before transferring to freezer bags. This will minimize a lot of excess moisture and will help your fruit salad becoming a completely mushy mess when it thaws. Keep frozen for 6-9 months.

Other Salad Recipes

Looking for other fruit salad recipes? Try these:

Christmas Side Dish Recipes

Here are some more of our favorite Christmas Side Dish recipe: