My Family's Italian Christmas Eve Tradition

Growing up in an Italian family, Christmas Eve has always been more important to me than than Christmas Day. It was the most anticipated night of the year and not just because it was the night when Santa delivered the toys! In fact, I wrote an essay about my family's Christmas Eve tradition in high school which was later published in a genealogy magazine.

Christmas Eve was always celebrated at my paternal grandparents' house where a traditional "Feast of the Seven Fishes" was served. I'm not exactly sure where the number seven comes from, although I've heard that it stems from either the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church or the seven days that it allegedly took Mary and Joseph to travel to Bethlehem. Whatever the origin, seafood entered the picture because the Catholic religion dictated abstinence from eating meat on Christmas Eve. Luckily for finicky eaters like me, the Catholic Church relaxed the eating rules, so my grandparents also made meatballs, sausage, and braciole along with gravy (sauce to you and me) and pasta.

My grandparents would rise early on Christmas Eve to begin the cooking and oftentimes the cooking was started days before. When my brother and I were young, we would go to my grandparents early in the day to assist with the rolling of cavatelli pasta. My grandfather would make and roll the dough and then cut it into small pieces which we would roll with our thumbs onto floured cloths.

The meal would consist of several courses each served separately. We would begin with a traditional toast (of course the grandchildren had grape juice in their wine glasses), followed by an orange salad.

The orange salad consisted of orange slices drizzled in olive oil with chopped garlic and sugar sprinkled on top. It sounds odd, but it actually tastes good! Next would come stuffed escarole with pinoli nuts and raisins, fried eels, codfish cakes, fried baccala (salted cod), stuffed clams,

squid cooked in tomato sauce, cold baccala salad, and finally the meat and pasta dishes that I had waited so patiently for. The last course before dessert would be a garden salad to clean the palate. Dessert varied but it usually included panettone, spumoni ice cream, my grandmother's famous chocolate crazy cake, pizzelle, biscotti and ancinetti cookies.

Since the death of my grandparents and uncle, we have kept the tradition intact, although some of the courses have been eliminated and my brother and his family only partake every other year when they're not with my sister-in-law's family for the holidays. I now make the sauce, meatballs, sausage and braciole using my grandmother's recipes, and my dad makes most of the other dishes. One tradition that we have continued with my children and my brother's children is the making and rolling of the homemade cavatelli. My dad rolls out the dough and then we all help roll the cavatelli.

My brother and his family hosted the meal at their home in Sudbury, MA this year and it turns out that my sister in law (who I don't think has an ounce of Italian blood in her) is the best cavatelli roller amongst us. Here's a photo of her at work. She's even a double roller and can roll pasta simulataneously with both thumbs. She says that she finds it very relaxing, LOL.

Here's a photo of the cooked pasta that we all helped make.

What's ironic is that my dad didn't make some of the fish dishes this year and my husband and my sister-in-law (who both married into the family and were not part of the original tradition) were disappointed. I think that next year they might be back on the menu, LOL!