Many holidays use food with their traditions. Christmas and New Years includes all kinds of foods with the holiday. Here are some of the most popular food traditions this holiday season.

Turkey is not only popular during Thanksgiving, it is commonly eaten during Christmas as well. The traditional Christmas dinner also includes mashed potatoes, gravy, and cranberry sauce.

For dessert, you could eat Christmas pudding, apple pie, or fruitcake. These foods correspond to the Christian Feast Day tradition.

Popular in Italy and Italians, the Feast of the Seven Fishes is one of their most popular dinner traditions. They are served seven seafood dishes, representing the number seven, the most repeated number in the bible.

In Japan however, things are not so homemade. The most popular Christmas dinner is digging into fast food meals. It was such a popular tradition that Christmas orders are placed up to two months in advance.

More common traditional Christmas foods are gingerbread cookies, sugar cookies, candy canes, roast beef, chicken, corn, and plenty more.

“My favorite dish is for sure chicken and homemade mac and cheese,” says sophomore Emma Welker.

With New Years food however, there are multiple meanings behind the dishes served that day.

Consuming black-eyed peas symbolizes good luck for the year to come. They are eaten because in the Civil War, the Union soldiers raided the Confederate army’s food supply, leaving them only this food.

Cake is a food eaten during New Year’s as well. The types of cake vary with cultures. The popular tradition with cake is that there is a token or trinket of some kind in the cake, whoever retrieves the slice with it is supposed to have good luck for the year ahead.

In Spain, a popular tradition they take place in is called Twelve Grapes. Like the name, they have twelve grapes that they eat one grape for every toll of the clock at the stroke of midnight.

In Japanese households, the families eat soba noodles when midnight arrives. The long noodles represent longevity and prosperity, to ensure the year to come is a good one.

“My family every year for New Years makes buffalo chicken dip. It is so good,” says freshman Branson Grindell

Foods are an important part of holiday’s traditions. It is a tasty way to celebrate the holidays every year whether for tradition, or luck.