I really love making fun food for any holiday, but Christmas offers up so many healthy possibilities! It's easy to find fresh fruits and vegetables in red, green, and white. And I think there are more cookie cutters for Christmas than any other holiday ( by far). I thought it might be helpful to gather some of my favorite healthy food ideas in one post, so today I am sharing a big collection of my best Christmas bento ideas:
COOKIE CUTTERS
You know, I hardly ever use my Christmas cookie cutters to make cookies anymore. It's just so easy to use them to cut fruits, veggies, and sandwiches! In no time at all you can make someone's lunch extra fun and they will know how much you love them 🙂 Here are some ways I have used Christmas cookie cutters in lunches:
To cut out an entire sandwich:
I did this for my Snowflake Sandwich Bento. I found a great snowflake cookie cutter that also presses a design in the top of the cookie when you cut it out, which is perfect for sandwiches - in fact, I think they work better on sandwiches than they do on cookie dough! I usually cut the top piece of bread before putting the sandwich together. It gives it a much cleaner look that way.
I also did this for the CuddlePalz Christmas Koala sandwich I made. Now this set is made for making cute sandwiches, but works fine for making cookies, too.
To decorate the top of a sandwich:
I have made regular sandwiches many times, and just used some cookie cutters to cut out cheese or other foods to decorate the top. It's another quick and easy way to add a Christmas touch to a basic lunch. I used 3 mini cookie cutters to make this Sandwich Snack Bento - I made a cheese gingerbread man, a cheese and apple candy cane, and used a star cookie cutter to cut out some kiwi fruit.
I got extra fancy with some cheese on this snowflake sandwich, and used a small star cookie cutter to make a little yellow pepper star to top a broccoli salad on the side.
One of my favorite ways to use a cookie cutter for a sandwich is just to cut out a little window on the top slice of bread, so you can see what's underneath. I did this with a pair of Christmas Sandwiches in a bento I made for my grandson. One is provolone cheese ( that made a cute snowman), and the other is nut butter sprinkled with green sugar ( that made a tree).
To decorate non-sandwich lunches:
I like to take leftovers from dinner the night before and make them into a fun bento the next day. A really easy way to do this is with some mini cookie cutters. I took the same leftovers and made them into 2 different lunches for my husband and I, just by using different mini cutters in my Ho, Ho, Ho Bento post:
Same food, different cookie cutters:
USING FOOD TO MAKE FUN CHRISTMAS SHAPES
You can also use the food itself to make some fun Christmas decorations. I used a hand-held spiral slicer to make a cucumber Christmas wreath to top a salad for lunch. 
White sushi rice makes perfect little onigiri balls - how could you not make snowmen out of them? This is all made from leftovers - which goes to show that you don't need much to make a memorable lunch! 
I was making my husband a ham and cheese bagel to go with his lunch, and I realized that a round bagel would be a great background for a wreath decoration. Since he really likes spicy stuff, I made a wreath out of chopped jalepenos with radish for a bow. If that's too spicy for you, try making one out of chopped pickles 🙂 
And the last fun food item I have on my list is this pepper and cream cheese Santa hat that I made to go with my Holly Jolly Sandwich wrap bento. It looks like something that should top a cupcake, but it's really made from the end of a mini bell pepper with cream cheese piped around it for the white fur trim! 
LUNCH BOXES I USED Sometimes people ask me what lunch box I use in a post and where to buy it. I will share links to all the bento boxes I used in this round-up below. But I have to tell you, when I first got started I didn't even have any bento boxes. I found a few plastic storage containers that worked pretty well, and you can see them in my Ho, Ho, Ho Bento post shown above. Eventually I was able to get some better bento boxes like these: