Ok I have never made anything called Christmas Pickles and far as I know Lime Pickles are the hard bright green ones with food coloring added and I have made those with both zukes and cukes.

So I assume you are talking about limed pickles - where the cucumber slices are pre-soaked for some hours in pickling lime and then rinsed well several times, correct? If not, ignore me. ;-)

If so then my experience with using zucchini and pickling lime is that you can't tell the difference between it and cucumbers after soaking in the lime brine except if using baseball bat zucchini. When the monster zuke swells to that size and the seed cavity is so big, the meat has a softer more grainy texture IMO. Tastes fine and its still very close to the same as cukes but just not quite as snappy crisp if you know what I mean. I don't know if that would make a difference in your Christmas Pickles or not

Hope that helps.

Dave

Thanks Dave that's exactly what I needed to know. Christmas pickles are lime pickles, but made with cinnamon sticks and red hot candies and are bright red. They are wonderful. I do have a base ball bat size zucchini that I wanted to use. Maybe I'll just shred and freeze it and go with the medium size for the pickles. Thanks so much for your input, I always know I can count on you to respond to my "help" calls