The Tradition of the Seven Fishes

The Christmas Eve feast worth doing. Recipe at the end.

The Feast of the seven fishes, contrived by Italian American Catholics to represent the seven sacraments, also celebrated the relative affluence they acquired living in the New World. It has evolved into one of America’s great Christmas eve food traditions, especially for the second and third-generation Italian-Americans living on the Northeast American Atlantic coast. This is where it all began. Though eating fish is a Christmas Eve tradition in Italy,  the SEVEN fishes feast is a distinctly Italian American thing.

As I have gotten older, my expectations of the holidays has evolved. They are more about memories, keeping them alive, and creating memories for the next generations. I still make the Seven Fishes every year and my kids have learned and celebrate the tradition, too. Success!

My earliest Holiday Kitchen memories were of my grandmother, or my  “Nonnie,” Millie Crisco, my mother Ro, and her twin sister Jo cranking out pots and plates and platters of seafood for the incredible Christmas Eve Seven Fishes Dinner.  The visual of these three very round Italian-American women donning ruffled aprons over their flowing flowery dresses in that small 1960s modern kitchen could be a Guttuso painting. The aromas of boiling baccalà, steaming shellfish, frying shrimp and flounder, and simmering crab sauce on the electric stove turned the air into an intoxicating haze. Olfactory memories are the strongest I have. 

The seven-course extravaganza in my Nonnie’s house was not laid out on the table with any sort of food styling or timing. The eating began in the late afternoon as the men, my grandfather (we called him Big Poppy), his cousins Toby and Foxy Frankie, and my uncles began arriving after work, They cleaned up, dressed in suits, and smelled of Aqua Velva and cigarette smoke. They poured themselves homemade wine from green jugs, beer from quart bottles, and shots of Galliano as they smoked and nibbled on stinky chunks of provolone while awaiting the arrival of multiple plates of seafood. 

Nonnie barked orders to my mother and Aunt Jo with her raspy, short-winded voice throughout the day.  They bickered and argued but still managed to pump out the goods. As each pan was completed, its contents were plattered up and set on the folding table. I was quick to learn that I had better get mine before it got devoured by the men. This was especially true of the fried frutti di mare. Glistening calamari, smelts, scallops, shrimp, and flounder seemed to vanish as soon as the brown paper towel-lined platters hit the table. The seafood salad, lemony and oily with calamari, octopus, and scungilli tossed with onions, celery, and mint, was usually the first dish completed and was on the table all day. Bowls of steamed mussels in olive oil and garlic were replenished on the table with frequency. Pie tins of baked stuffed Quahog clams, hot from the oven, appeared every half hour or so. These dishes constituted an extended cocktail hour, often eaten off paper plates, standing up in the kitchen with the women or on the screen porch with the men.