Poppy seeds are widely used for Christmas Eve dishes, because they symbolize abundance and prosperity.

Usually it is eaten together with kūčiukai, another traditional Lithuanian Christmas Eve dish.

Our meal consisted of octopus followed by sea bass - a traditional Croat Christmas Eve dish.

At Cencenighe, casunziei served with ground poppy seeds and honey were a traditional Christmas Eve dish.

This is the great festive and Christmas Eve dish of Madrid that is now popular in other parts of Spain.

In this version, meat stock is either omitted or replaced with fish broth, usually made by boiling the heads cut off from fish used in other Christmas Eve dishes.

Such salads are often served on family celebrations, in particular on Christmas Eve (Christmas Eve dishes are very different from the food that is served on Christmas Day).

When vegetarian (filled only with mushrooms or onion) they are a part of traditional Christmas Eve dishes in Poland and Ukraine, and are either added in the soup, or eaten as a side dish.

But the Internet has also given anyone with a keyboard a good shot at tracking down a book with a grandmother's particular recipe for beef stew or Ensalada de Noche Buena, a traditional Christmas Eve dish of diced fruit and jicama sprinkled with peanuts and pomegranate seeds served in many parts of Mexico.

In as much as there is a Christmas Eve dish, it is fish.