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Feast of the Seven Fishes

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The Feast of the Seven Fishes (festa dei sette pesci), celebrated on Christmas Eve, also known as The Vigil (La Vigilia), is believed to have originated in Southern Italy and is not a known tradition in many parts of Italy. Today, it is a feast that typically consists of seven different seafood dishes. However, some Italian-American families have been known to celebrate with nine, eleven or thirteen different seafood dishes. This celebration commemorates the wait, Vigilia di Natale, for the midnight birth of the baby Jesus.

Tradition

The long tradition of eating seafood on Christmas Eve dates from the Roman Catholic tradition of abstinence– in this case, refraining from the consumption of meat or milk products– on Wednesdays, Fridays and (in the Latin Church) Saturdays, as well as during Lent and on the eve of specific holy days. As no meat or butter could be used on such days, observant Catholics would instead eat fish, typically fried in oil.

The "Feast of the Seven Fishes", is a celebration of Christmas Eve with meals of fish and other seafood. There may be seven, eight, or even nine specific fishes that are considered traditional. The most famous dish Southern Italians are known for is baccalà (salted cod fish). The custom of celebrating with a simple fish such as baccalà is attributed to the greatly impoverished regions of Southern Italy. Fried smelts, calamari and other types of seafood have been incorporated into the Christmas Eve dinner over the years.

Symbolism

There are many hypotheses for what the number "7" represents. Seven is the most repeated number in the Bible and appears over 700 times.

One popular theory is the number represents completion, as shown in Genesis 2:2: "By the seventh day God completed the work he had been doing; so on the seventh day he rested from all his work." Other theories include: that the number represents the seven Sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church; and that seven is a number representing perfection; the traditional Biblical number for divinity is three, and for Earth is four, and the combination of these numbers, seven, represents God on Earth, or Jesus Christ.

A typical Christmas Eve meal

The meal's components may include some combination of anchovies, whiting, lobster, sardines, dried salt cod, smelts, eels, squid, octopus, shrimp, mussels and clams. [1]. The menu may also include pastas, vegetables, baked or fried kale patties, baked goods and homemade wine. Also, this tradition still remains very popular to this day. [2]

References

  1. ^ Craig Claiborne, "A Seven-Course Feast of Fish", The New York Times, December 16, 1987 http://www.nytimes.com/1987/12/16/garden/a-seven-course-feast-of-fish.html
  2. ^ Amanda P. Sidman,"Seven NYC chefs gives recipes for Feast of the Seven Fishes", The Daily News, December 22, 2011 http://articles.nydailynews.com/2011-12-22/news/30548768_1_dish-italian-heritage-feast

See also

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