Tradition
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 butter could be used on such days, observant Catholics would instead eat fish, typically fried in oil.
The meal may include seven, eight, or even nine specific fishes that are considered traditional. The most famous dish Southern Italians are known for is baccalà (salted cod fish). The custom of celebrating with a simple fish such as baccalà is attributed to the greatly impoverished regions of Southern Italy. Fried smelts, calamari and other types of seafood have been incorporated into the Christmas Eve dinner over the years.
Read more about this topic: Feast Of The Seven Fishes
Famous quotes containing the word tradition:
“It is characteristic of the epistemological tradition to present us with partial scenarios and then to demand whole or categorical answers as it were.”
—Avrum Stroll (b. 1921)
“Barnard’s greatest war service ... was the continuance of full-scale instruction in the liberal arts ... It was Barnard’s responsibility to keep alive in the minds of young people the great liberal tradition of the past and the study of philosophy, of history, of Greek.”
—Virginia Crocheron Gildersleeve (1877–1965)
“To value the tradition of, and the discipline required for, the craft of fiction seems today pointless. The real Arcadia is a lonely, mountainous plateau, overbouldered and strewn with the skulls of sheep slain for vellum and old bitten pinions that tried to be quills. It’s forty rough miles by mule from Athens, a city where there’s a fair, a movie house, cotton candy.”
—Alexander Theroux (b. 1940)