Feast of the Seven Fishes

The Feast of the Seven Fishes (Italian: Festa dei sette pesci), also known as The Vigil (Italian: La Vigilia), is an Italian celebration of Christmas Eve with meals of fish and other seafood.

Origins and tradition

The Feast of the Seven Fishes is part of the Italian-American Christmas Eve celebration, although it's not called by this name in Italy and is not a "feast" in the stricter sense of "holiday," but a grand meal. Strictly speaking, Christmas Eve is a vigil or fasting day, and the abundance of seafood reflects the tradition of abstinence from red meat until the actual feast of Christmas Day itself.

Today, it is a meal that typically consists of seven different seafood dishes. It originates, however, from Southern Italy, where it is known simply as The Vigil (La Vigilia). 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 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 animal fat (there is no prohibition on milk or dairy products) could be used on such days, observant Catholics would instead eat fish, typically fried in oil.