Nanna’s sharing her kinder Christmas recipes with Australia.

For many animals, the countdown to Christmas means something entirely different than it does for us.

The turkeys whose lives will be cut short for Christmas dinners were born just a few weeks ago. Most of the chickens destined for festive tables haven’t even hatched yet. For pigs, it’s a story that started long before December, behind the closed doors of a factory farm.

That a time of celebration for many can also mean so much suffering for animals is a painful contradiction. But it doesn’t have to be this way. Our new campaign, Nanna’s Christmas Table, is an invitation to reimagine what we serve, while keeping everything we cherish: generosity, connection and the joy of sharing delicious food.

You might be lucky enough to know one: a Nanna whose cooking is the beating heart of every celebration. For the Altavilla family, that’s Nanna Mirella.

Her kitchen is where generations of Venezuelan-Italian flavour live: creamy lasagnes, slow-simmered sauces, and cakes that vanish before they’ve cooled. So, when granddaughter Claudia started eating plant-based, you might expect Nanna to have raised an eyebrow.

Instead, she rolled up her sleeves.

Rather than let go of the dishes that had brought the family together for decades, Nanna and Claudia set about reinventing them. They swapped in plants and kept every bit of the flavour (and the love). Recipe by recipe, the old favourites returned to the table, still tasting exactly like home.

Their kitchen sessions became The Nanna Diaries, a video series on VegKit — Animals Australia’s kinder eating initiative. And this Christmas, Nanna’s festive recipes will be gracing the pages of some of Australia’s most popular magazines, showing that a tradition doesn’t have to stay the same to stay special.

On VegKit you’ll find a mix of Nanna’s holiday favourites from her famous plant-based meatballs and chocolate-swirled marble cake to a festive roast worthy of centre stage.

Nanna Mirella shows us that with a few plant-based tweaks, the dishes that connect us to our cultures and bring our families together can become part of a kinder celebration.

Whether you’re curious to try new things or devoted to traditional flavours, Nanna’s recipes are here to please everyone at the table this Christmas.

Just imagine how many people might discover their favourite festive dishes can be every bit as delicious without needing any animal products. And how many animals might be spared as a result.

Traditions aren’t only things we inherit. They’re also things we get to create and pass on.

Many of the ways we think about animals have been handed down too, often without question. But just as Nanna Mirella’s recipes evolved over the years, so can our thinking. Every Christmas, we get to choose what we carry forward.

And what a beautiful tradition kindness is to pass on, to our families, to future generations, and to the animals who share this world with us.