For many families, Christmas dinner is the most extravagant, special, and looked-forward-to meal of the season. But in my family we’ve always focused on what we’ll be stuffing ourselves with on Christmas Eve, when that anticipation of ripping through piles of gifts is at an all-time high. Since both sides of my family are from Alaska and now reside in the Pacific Northwest, seafood (and wild salmon in particular) has always been a unanimous family favorite. A couple of decades ago we decided to start a new tradition of having an annual seafood feast on Christmas Eve—it just felt like the right thing to do.
Little did we know, the Feast of the Seven Fishes (AKA the Eve, AKA the Vigil, or la Vigilia) is a longstanding Christmas Eve tradition among Italian Americans. The tradition of eating seafood (considered a fasting food) on Christmas Eve (a fasting day) dates back to the Roman Catholic practice of abstaining from meat on the eve of a feast day (Christmas). Devouring copious amounts of luxurious seafood and wine and calling it a fast is a mindboggling, ballsy move—but I am completely on board.
