Feast of the Seven Fishes

The Feast of the Seven Fishes (Festa dei Sette Pesci) is an Italian American celebration of Christmas Eve with dishes of fish and other seafood. It is not a "feast" in the sense of "holiday", but rather a grand meal. Christmas Eve is a vigil or fasting day, and the abundance of seafood reflects the observance of abstinence from meat until the feast of Christmas Day itself.

Origins and tradition
The Feast of the Seven Fishes typically consists of seven different seafood dishes. The tradition comes from Southern Italy, where it is known as The Vigil (La Vigilia), but with no mention of the number seven. This celebration commemorates the wait, the Vigilia di Natale, for the midnight birth of the baby Jesus. The long tradition of eating seafood on Christmas Eve dates from the Roman Catholic tradition of abstaining from eating meat on the eve of a feast day. As no meat or animal fat could be used on such days, observant Catholics would instead eat fish (typically fried in oil). It is unclear when or where the term "Feast of the Seven Fishes" was popularized. Nick Vadala, writing for The Philadelphia Inquirer found the newspaper's oldest reference to the feast in a 1983 article.

The meal includes seven or more fishes that are considered traditional. "Seven fishes" as a fixed concept or name is unknown in Italy. In some Italian-American families, there is no count of the number of fish dishes. A well-known dish is baccalà (salted cod fish). The custom of celebrating with a simple fish such as baccalà reflects customs in what were historically impoverished regions of Southern Italy, as well as seasonal factors. Fried smelts, calamari and other types of seafood have been incorporated into the Christmas Eve dinner over the years.

The number seven may come from the seven Sacraments of the Catholic Church, or the seven hills of Rome, or some other source. There is no general agreement on its meaning.

Typical feast
The meal's components may include some combination of anchovies, whiting, lobster, sardines, baccalà (dried salt cod), smelts, eels, squid, octopus, shrimp, mussels and clams. The menu may also include pasta, vegetables, baked goods and wine.

Popular dishes



 * Baccalà with pasta, as a salad, or fried
 * Baked cod
 * Clams casino
 * Cod fish balls in tomato sauce
 * Dolphinfish
 * Deep fried calamari
 * Deep fried cod
 * Deep fried fish/shrimp
 * Deep fried scallops
 * Fried smelts
 * Insalata di mare (seafood salad)
 * Linguine with anchovy, clam, lobster, tuna, or crab sauce
 * Marinated or fried eel
 * Octopus salad
 * Oyster shooters
 * Puttanesca with anchovies
 * Scungilli salad
 * Shrimp cocktail
 * Stuffed calamari in tomato sauce
 * Stuffed-baked lobsters
 * Stuffed-baked quahogs
 * Whiting

In popular culture

 * The graphic novel Feast of the Seven Fishes, written by Robert Tinnell (2005; ISBN 0976928809), has been made into a feature film also titled Feast of the Seven Fishes, featuring Skyler Gisondo and Madison Iseman, released 15 November 2019.
 * Iron Chef Showdown had the feast of the seven fishes as a secret ingredient.
 * The Bear, season 2, Episode 6: the Berzatto family meet for a Feast of the Seven Fishes: a traumatic, dysfunctional flashback where they argue at one point over the ambiguous origins of the feast &mdash; and where one guest brings an eighth fish dish, thrown out because it could ostensibly bring bad luck. The fishes also end up as a final dish for The Bear.
 * If You Give Me Seven Fishes a song written and performed by artist Tony Trov in the style of Louis Prima was released on Spotify, Apple Music and Youtube in 2023.