Another Christmas Eve has left my wife Rita and me exhausted from all the work. The Feast of the Seven Fishes has become an annual celebration to prove that money is no object and no sea creature is safe from the Italian digestive system.
Why must we serve seven kinds of sea life? I don’t recall such a number requirement for our parents – it was just lots of different fish. So, now we count. Before the Eve, we planned for ten different fishes – oysters, clams, salmon, tuna, octopus, squid, scungilli, shrimp, mussels, and salt cod (baccalà). Unfortunately, our guests were cheated out of oysters as I forgot them in the refrigerator. Still, the almighty Seven had two fishes to spare.
Back when our folks and grandfolks prepared the feast, we learned to eat cheap seafood. Raw clams, not oysters, were on the menu but so was fried eel. Scungilli was served diced up and spread over ‘hardtack,” those jaw-breaking biscuits Italian seamen crushed to soak up the tomato sauce. We ate snails using straight pins to pull the critters out of their shells and then sucked out the juice. Cheap Blue Claw crabs were a bloody mess to eat trying to scrape the flesh out of broken shells. Today, snails, eels, and Blue Claws have been replaced with costly lobsters, salmon filets, and King Crab. The feast is no longer affordable.
The larger question is why do Italic people link joy with hard work? Even buying cleaned shrimp and squid still requires hours of preparing the feast. We not only enjoy the seafood, but we have to make sure everyone is ‘stuffed to the gills’ (not an Italian idiom, but an Anglo one). On Christmas Eve my rule is “seafood only.” We have an annual guest who refused to eat fish, not even tuna fish. We made no allowance for her. Eventually, she tried a shrimp cocktail, this year she added baked salmon. Someday I may fight her over the baccalà!
But I’m an outlier among Italian American hosts. So many of our friends feel guilty limiting their menu to fish. They’ll make a roast to accommodate meat eaters. Of course, there are many Italo families who never had a Seven Fishes tradition – might have something to do with their ancestral region in Italy. But if fish is your tradition, don’t compromise!
Imagine going to a Jewish home for a Passover Seder and asking for one of the 5 forbidden foods: wheat, barley, oats, rice, rye and spelt (a type of wheat); or other no-nos like rice, beans, corn, or lentils. Such a cafone will also be told that any alcohol made from these foods is by relation forbidden. Lucky he can have (grape) wine or (potato) vodka.
The Seven Fishes should have an educational component like the Passover Seder. Jewish diners are presented with a plate containing six symbolic foods. One to represent the lamb’s blood Moses used to protect Hebrew homes from God’s plague, an egg to represent the circle of life, bitter herbs to represent the bitterness of Egyptian slavery, and so forth. It would not be difficult to create an Italian symbolic plate.
Clams, as in ‘how many clams?’ could stand for all the money being spent at the fish market. The shrimp could represent how short Roman soldiers were able to conquer a world of taller people. Fennel (“finocchio”) already is slang for gay people (aka “diversity”). For The Godfather fans octopus (“la piovra”) is Italian slang for the Mafia. And, of course, baccalà is our description for any stiff who’s oblivious to reality.
May I also suggest that a portion of the Seven Fishes meal be dedicated to correcting Italian American malapropisms. Offenders should be corrected whenever they call calamari ‘galamar,’ il pesce ‘ooh besch,’ or antipasto ‘andybast.’
And for God’s sake, can’t we forget how many fishes arrive at the table? Three simple dishes will please the palate and cut down on labor. Next year, how about Raw or Baked Clams, Lobster Ravioli, and baked Cod or Baccalà.
Just stop counting! – JLM
Put me down for RAW CLAMS and baccala!
Thanks for sharing, John. The Pizzulli family made it through five — tuna, salmon, swordfish, shrimp and clams. Nana Pizzulli informed us that eel was always on the menu when she was growing up, but that was a tradition she gladly discontinued! Buon anno nuovo!
Vincent
Imagine the prep dealing with slimy eels!
Buon Anno to you and yours!
John
I have written about this subject. It is important to keep the
spirit of the tradition alive. It is not important that it be seven fish offerings. In some parts of Italy 3 or 12 fish courses are served. It is better to serve three fish courses than none. Due to time and cost the tradition can be kept alive with less than seven courses on Christmas Eve. A local supermarket had a recipe of a seven fish salad for Christmas Eve, now that makes it really easy!
In the world of allergies, I got the best of the deal, –of the feast of the 7 fishes, ..i can eat shell foods or mollusks, but not fish….so I can indulge in all the shell food dishes, strange too, I can eat canned tuna and anchovies but not baccala`, although it was always served after Midnight Mass…….ain’t complaining….but can also enjoy paella and crab cioppino (one of those Italo American creations) originating in old North Beach primarily among the Genovese and Sicilian fishermen at the wharf. Buon Natale, e Felice Anno 2024!
PS In 2024, planning on donating the model of my Uncle’s confiscated fishing boat during the war years to the SF Maritime Museum. As an aside, there is a movie out online called The Feast of the 7 Fishes….they got the food right, but the usual stereotypes gave me “agita”(sp?)
Interesting food allergies – always thought they were confined to shellfish.
Love to hear more about your family in 1942 – were they compensated for 6-months of lost income and boat repairs?
The smelts bit the dust, this year..Too many years of leftovers for them…
Saying ‘galamar,’ ‘ooh besch,’ and andybast.’ is not wrong. Those words are from various Southern Italian dialects that Italian Americans heard from their ancestors. Same for ‘fasul”, “capisc”, ‘paisan”, etc.
I would suggest that these are not “certifiable” pronunciations. There must be dictionaries of Italian dialects that can be compared to the vulgate speech.
How much of this “down home” talk sounds like the Clampett English on The Beverly Hillbillies?
I second these comments. These pronunciations are correct or almost correct in southern “dialects,” mainly Neapolitan, influenced here with English. They are really another language. A wise wit said: “The difference between a language and a dialect is that a dialect doesn’t have an army.”
Sorry, but from my experience with the first and second generations of IAs doesn’t confirm either of your comments. The first generation barely finished 6th grade in Italy – they were not masters of either Florentine or Neapolitan. When I was in 6th grade, my teacher sent me to speech class to correct my Brooklyn dialect- “true the window” to “through the window”. The second generation (our parents) butchered the vocabulary they heard even more. How we got gabbaghoul from capocollo is still a mystery to me. Show me a Neapolitan dictionary that has no words beginning with C, but only with G. My father used to say ngoppa for “upstairs,” but in the Neapolitan classic Funiculi` Funicula` the lyric is ncoppa (“to the top”)
John, this is akin to the gravy vs. sauce debate. In other words, much to do about nothing. People pronounce the same word differently in different places.(E.g., tomayto in New York, tomahto in London.) As for the c’s becoming g’s in the Italian south consider this: My mother’s maiden name was Trentalange. In “standard” Italian that should be Trentalancia. (Her folks came from Campobasso in Molise.) And one more example: Many Italian language purists cringe at “Pasta Fazool” but that is just the anglicized spelling of the Neapolitan “Pasta e fasule.” Beans may be fagioli in Florence but they’re fasule in Naples (and Little Italy, NYC).
So bad pronunciation equals “dialect.” I ain’t buying it, Bob. Would you defend my “true the window” as Brooklyn dialect? Marron!