Edwards (front, center) with her brother and cousins at their grandparents' house on a Christmas Day in the mid 70's. The kids always had to wait until after dinner to open their gifts

Holiday Food Finder :

England, Germany and France United States and Israel India Japan Poland, Czech Republic and Austria Puerto Rico and Mexico China

From CNN Interactive Writer Marla Edwards

(CNN) -- Every year on Christmas Day, my grandparents' house was filled with their children and grandchildren and so many gifts they seemed to stack almost to the ceiling of their living room. The table practically groaned under the weight of the abundant Christmas dinner -- turkey, dressing, ham, dumplings, vegetable soup, deviled eggs, green beans, peas and a selection of casseroles. For dessert, there would be red velvet cake and pecan pie.

On New Year's Day, my Granny Edwards never failed to have collard greens and black-eyed peas bubbling on top of the stove, and a pan of her incredibly delicious cornbread. The greens were meant to bring the family enough dollars (she called them greenbacks) for the coming year, and she said the peas represented coins, though I've also heard that eating them on New Year's Day will bring you luck.

These are traditions of the American South. Granny was born on a farm in Alabama and spent most of her life in a small Georgia town. My grandfather (we called him Pa) was a Tennessean by birth whose family moved to Georgia when he was a child.

For them, family was the most important thing. Our holiday meals together nourished our souls as well as our bodies.

Food is at the heart of holiday celebrations, whether you're observing Christmas, Hanukkah or New Year's in Macon, Minsk or Madrid. These holiday meals are often prepared with available local ingredients, like the collards and peas that my grandparents grew in their gardens, but they are more than just the sum of their ingredients.

Around the world, traditional foods are eaten in honor of sacred days and to usher in a new year of good fortune and good health:

An English Christmas dinner is akin to the turkey-and-stuffing meals gracing most American tables, except it also includes mince pies and plum puddings, which get their names not from the fruit but from the process of "plumming," or plumping up raisins and currants with warm brandy. In Germany, Christmas is celebrated with gingerbread cookies, spice cookies called pfeffernüsse and lebkuchen and cakes called baumkuchen, which are shaped like Christmas trees, and bratwurst. In France, Christmas dessert is bûche de Noël, a sponge cake filled with butter cream and decorated like a Yule log. Other holiday delicacies include oysters and escargot.

During Hanukkah, Jewish people in the United States eat latkes, potato pancakes fried in oil and served with apple sauce and sour cream. Gelt, chocolate "coins" wrapped in gold foil, are popular for children. In Israel, the holiday is celebrated with doughnuts called sufganiyot. Hanukkah marks the rededication of the Temple of Jerusalem after years of war and persecution. When the Holy Temple was regained, there was only a small amount of oil to light the menorah. Miraculously, it burned for eight days, until more oil arrived. Hence, fried foods are associated with the holiday.

In southern regions of India, a three-day festival in mid-January called Pongal includes ceremonial offerings of rice and a dish of rice cooked with palm sugar that is shared with family and friends.

Japan celebrates New Year's with a seven-day festival that begins January 1. Food is prepared ahead of time so that no cooking needs to be done during the festival. On New Year's day, a wide variety of dishes called Osechi ryori are served elaborately in lacquered boxes -- each dish is a symbol of hope for the new year: roe for fertility, black beans for health, seaweed for happiness, and the like. Many families also eat mochi, a rice cake prepared by pounding rice into a sticky dough.

It's traditional in Poland to eat carp on Christmas Eve. On Christmas, a cake called makowiec (filled with poppy seeds, raisins, almonds and honey) is served. Czechs and Austrians also eat carp for the holiday. In the Czech Republic, the fish is prepared traditionally in aspic, in soup, fried and baked with prunes. Czechs also eat kolaches, sweet rolls filled with poppy seeds, dried fruit, nuts or sweetened cottage cheese.

Puerto Ricans make pasteles at Christmas -- and hand them out to neighborhood carolers. The steamed cornmeal envelopes are filled with a meat mixture and are very much like Mexican tamales. In some regions of Mexico the Christmas cornucopia includes buñuelos, deep-fried, anise-flavored cookies covered with syrup or sugar that are served in pottery bowls. The cookies get eaten, then the bowls get dashed to the ground for good luck.

In most Asian countries, the New Year begins with the first full moon of the first Chinese lunar month. Each region has its special food to usher in the coming year: People in China prepare their food ahead of time to avoid the possibility that using a knife during New Year's might "cut luck." Foods with auspicious names are popular, such as fish, which sounds like "surplus." Vietnamese New Year's favorites include Bahn chung (a glutinous rice cake filled with beans and ground meat and cooked in banana leaves) and shark fin soup.