Food is a serious matter in Portugal! Everyone will tell you that in Portugal, when a family or friends reunion happens, people spend hours at the table, talking, laughing, and enjoying the starters, the main courses, the desserts, the coffee, the digestives, the drinks, red wine, champagne, Port Wine, Ginginha, and more! For Christmas Eve, many Portuguese have a light dinner called Consoada . Portugal is still a very Catholic country and being so it's natural that many abstain from eating meat, opting instead for fish - mainly codfish - or seafood dishes. In some regions, people eat octopus instead of cod, either roasted with potatoes or mixed with rice. Christmas sometimes falls on a Friday, the traditional day of abstinence to the Catholic Church. But it's more than that. Most European cultures developed Christmas Eve customs that included meatless meals before the family went off to Midnight Mass. In ancient times a day of fasting and abstinence was designed to heighten the