Feast of the Seven Fishes

I watched a movie recently that originally came out in 2019 on Netflix entitled “Feast of the Seven Fishes” and it got me thinking about some of the holidays I experienced growing up with my Italian family. The people in the film were funny, but they were composites of how true Italian families carry themselves. Are we loud? Sure! Do we like food and spend a lot of time cooking? Yes – absolutely. But the movie got me thinking about why Italian Americans celebrate Christmas with this feast and how it began or why it even happens.

The Feast of the Seven Fishes typically consists of seven different seafood dishes. The tradition comes from Southern Italy, incidentally, where my maternal grandparents (Sicily) and my paternal grandmother (Campania) were from, and it is known as La Vigilia. This celebration commemorates the wait, the Vigilia di Natale, for the midnight birth of the baby Jesus. The tradition of eating seafood or fish on Christmas Eve dates from the Catholic tradition of abstaining from eating meat, similar to not eating meat on Fridays during Lent. The number seven may come from the seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church. We are all about our sacraments in Catholicism and the celebration of these occasions!

Some of the stereotypes in the movie that I recognized revolved around Italians talking with their hands (no one in my family did this), they wear sunglasses all day long (my dad sometimes did this, which drove me crazy), they have big families (we are a family of two girls – although my dad came from a blended family of five); and they are hot headed and are connected to the Mafia. On that last part, the connections to Cosa Nostra in our family were usually tied to an inability to pay fees or angering someone inadvertently and ending up on the wrong side of an argument (at least this is my understanding of what happened to my great grandfather). But no one in my family was involved in the Mafia. If anything, there was anger that people assumed there were connections that were never the case.

But I have nothing to quarrel with about the food presented in the movie. On that front, the writers got it absolutely right! I was actually very impressed with what they showed in the movie, which I’m almost certain wouldn’t be palatable for many. They presented fried smelts, which are very small fish which are deep fried and eaten whole. They are sometimes dipped in garlicky aioli which is very delicious. My family never made these, but I have enjoyed them on travels to the Midwest. Another item presented was baccala (dried salt cod). This is extremely accurate and was something my mom made into fritters or into a warm spread you could slather on toast. It sounds awful but is really delicious. The characters in the film focused a lot of attention on soaking the dried fish and this is an extremely important part of the process. Baccala is something important to cultures where refrigeration was unavailable. It was a way of preserving the fish to use year-round. Where my mom’s family was from in Sicily, this was an important part of how people survived during cold and warm weather.

Other items in the film included eel, which my mom never served. I’m not sure she liked it herself, so we never had to suffer through that ordeal, thankfully! They also served stuffed calamari and clams, which is very much on point. And there was a nice scene with the grandfather (who looked very much the part with his sunglasses) sauteing the shrimp.

Full confession: my mom was interviewed by a reporter several years ago who is a friend once about this topic and mentioned that in her family, they typically served beef. Why? Because it was a sign of means in the community when she was young. Seafood was considered “inexpensive” and therefore, not something that an immigrant family like my mom’s family would have served when attempting to celebrate with their family. How times have changed. Seafood is now very much at a premium and I assume my grandparents would have been incredibly happy to serve it now. My dad’s family did not have a lot of “means” and they served pasta. My grandmother, Venturella, was from Salerno and seafood was not a common thing that she made. She passed away many years ago when I was young, but I did have the chance to help her make ravioli once and they were excellent!

So, what is best to serve for this occasion which usually takes place on Christmas Eve? In our family when we made the Feast of Seven Fishes we served blue fish dip, smoked salmon on potato galettes or blini, shrimp fra diavolo, baked clams, raw and baked or grilled oysters, spicy mussels, crab cakes, and grilled lobster tails. It’s a lot of work, but we have generally split up the assignments to make everything run easier and there is a fair amount of work that can happen ahead of time.

I did watch with a lot of enthusiasm, the famous scene earlier this year in the show the Bear, featuring Jamie Lee Curtis as the matriarch of the family. The episode of the show was entitled “Fishes” and shows a family experiencing the stress of the holiday preparing the Feast of the Seven Fishes. It ends with the mom driving her car into the house after raging at everyone. In no way shape or form does the meal need to cause as much angst as anything presented in the show! With a little planning and some items made ahead, anyone can make a stress-free version of the meal and enjoy the holiday season angst free with family and friends. By the way, my favorite character in that episode was played by John Mulaney, who is not a member of the family and looks at everyone as if they are crazy. It was a great turn and I fully intend to watch it again!

I hope your holiday preparations are off to a great start and that you are taking the time to really enjoy this holiday season!