52 Ancestors Week 46: Cultural Tradition

From Amy Johnson Crow:  Week 46

The theme for Week 46 is "Cultural Tradition." What is a cultural tradition in your family? It could be ethnicity-based, could also be cultural in terms of geography. You could also think of "culture" in terms of the arts. Feel free to be creative!

Oh, hi expensive Christmas tree ornaments! Beware of the cat!

    Where has the time gone? It's already November and the holidays are upon us. They defrosted Mariah Carey and her holiday song is now playing in every Wal-Mart, Target, Home Depot and other big box stores all over the United States. That's fine, though. The holidays are a great time to talk about the cultural traditions your family has and as someone with Italian heritage, I have my fair share of traditions. 

    In the blog, I've often talked about the amazing Christmas eve parties my family would host every year for as long as I could remember. But, what you might not know is how the parties all got their start in the first place. Follow along as I tell everyone the tale of how the Feast of the Seven Fishes evolved into an annual Christmas event that was not to be missed!

My grandfather Marco and Cammy

    The Feast of the Seven Fishes is an Italian-American celebration of Christmas Eve and as the name implies fish is normally served as the main meal. That's very important. As Catholics, we abstain from eating meat until the feast of Christmas Day.

    In southern Italy, the tradition is called "La Vigila" or "The Vigiil". This celebration commemorates the wait or "the Vigilia di Natale" for the midnight birth of the baby Jesus.  The tradition of eating fish on that day dates from the Roman Catholic tradition of abstaining from meat on the eve of a feast day. As a result, Catholics celebrating this event would eat fish fried in oil.  There wouldn't be any variation of cow, lamb or pig.

    It's currently unclear where the "seven fishes" part of the tradition came from. However, we normally served haddock, shrimp, mussels, fried clams and of course squid prepared in at least five different ways at our house. At least!! The thing is no one actually adhered to the  "seven fish" rule. You can have as much fish as you want. It just had to be on the menu!

    There has been some serious thought about the issue. Many people feel that the "seven fishes" represents the seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church or even the seven hills of Rome. It's hard to say because every Italian family has their own take on why exactly seven fishes are served. There's no real agreement and honestly you're not going to get Catholics to agree on anything....especially the Italians.  I wonder if anyone bothered to tell the cook that shrimp, squid and clams weren't technically fish, either. Uhh....yeah. I wouldn't want to tell the cook either. I don't want to be hit by a rolling pin.

How it all started.

    When my grandfather Marco came to America, he of course brought the tradition with him. Italians in Haverhill attended midnight mass at Saint Rita's Parish in Haverhill and wouldn't leave until after midnight on Christmas Day. 

I'm not sure if my grandmother attended midnight mass. However, he and grandma Ollie would have the feast at their house with their friends and family before church.

    As you can imagine everyone was over their house for the feast. Ollie's sisters would have parties at their houses as well. I'm not sure what was served at those dinners. My mom remembered one Christmas feast where Marco brought eel to the dinner. As you can imagine, it did not go over very well.

    You know, they could have just served it on rice and wrapped seaweed around it. I'm just putting that out there. There's nothing wrong with a little unagi every now and then. Then again, would you eat the eels that were swimming around the Merrimack river? Ick. Probably not. I've seen them. There's not much meat on those little sea snakes. Though, a little wasabi and soy sauce might make them taste a little better.

    As time went by people in my parents' extended family were also invited to the parties. There was a Christmas Eve party where my great-grandmother Clara Laplante said that she didn't like squid. But, she loved calamari. That just makes me laugh because calamari IS squid! I don't think anyone was upset about the comment. It just made for a funny story and for ages the funniest stories usually happened at one of the Christmas eve parties.

    When grandpa Marco passed away in 1983, my parents took over the hosting duties and had been doing it ever since. We would pick up my grandmother and have her stay at our house over the holiday. The rest as they say is history. Family history!

Nana, my mom, two of her sisters and 
Grandpa Bob.

      So, that's how the Christmas eve parties evolved from the Feast of the Seven fishes. You take one Catholic celebration and it turns into a big dinner where everyone is invited! The tradition still continues to this day even though many people who used to attend the events are either no longer with us or have long since moved away.

    At least the memories of the parties are still there and that's what matters. Well, the memories and the pictures at least. Lord knows we have plenty of both. And that's a good thing. Some cultural traditions like this are worth having because in the end everyone can participate and nothing brings people closer together than food. 

    It just amazes me how a Christmas tradition brought over from Italy became a Christmas party. When you grow up like I did you don't really think about the traditions of your family all that much. You just roll with the punches, get hugs and hopefully get that twenty dollar bill from your grandparents. That's just how it was. I honestly had no idea it had its roots in Catholic beliefs until recently. I knew about the Feast of the Seven Fishes for sure. But, I never understood the implications. Now I do and it doesn't seem too bad now that I think about it. It's just amazing to me how a religious feast can turn into a big party at the end of the night. That's a cool tradition for sure!

See ya next time!

Just tucked into the corner. Send help!