Still Going Swimmingly:

The Feast of the Seven Fishes Remains a Beloved Christmas Tradition 

By Denise K. James

Lois Rogers is a 73-year-old Italian American who relocated to South Carolina in 2021 and looks forward to a special meal each year during the holiday season — one her family has prepared “every Christmas as far back as [she] can remember.” The Feast of the Seven Fishes is exactly what it sounds like: an elaborate meal of multiple seafood dishes on Christmas eve. The number seven is a nod to the meal’s Catholic roots, though many Italian Americans, Lois included, now consider the tradition to be more cultural than faith-based. 

More American Than Italian
The Feast of the Seven Fishes is not a custom for all Italians, according to an article published on Eataly.com, an Italian marketplace and educational website. The biodiversity of the country, including differences between Northern and Southern regions, accounts for many different celebratory meals for the eve of Christmas, with the Feast of the Seven Fishes being just one of several. 

In fact, the Feast of the Seven Fishes is actually more American than it is Italian; Italian Americans chose to celebrate Christmas with a meal that offered homage to their Catholic roots — many Catholics eat seafood rather than beef, pork or lamb on holy days — as well as celebrate their beloved country of origin and its proximity to the sea. 

Remembering Christmas Past 

When Lois Rogers was a little girl, her family went to great lengths to prepare the Feast of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. But she says now that she’s preparing it herself, it tends to take on different forms, depending on who’s coming to dinner and what fresh seafood is available. Rogers’ son, whom she calls “a real traditionalist,” is one of the main persuaders in her family circle — he’ll even offer to come over and help his mother prepare the meal. “He’ll ask me, ‘Mom, are you doing the fish?’ and he offers to come over to help,” she says. “He cleaned the calamari, then he breaded it, and with his help we got it all done.”

Growing up, Lois’ family always had seven different types of seafood — including smelts, a tiny fish reminiscent of a sardine and difficult to find, especially in the Southeastern United States. But smelts are a favorite, and Lois says she “will still make them, as long as she can find them.” “You pair them with a garlic gravy that you make that morning,” she explains. “Then you roll the smelts in flour and fry them lightly until they are golden brown.” 

Even if these small fish are not on her menu, Lois’ feast is never a slouch. A seafood pasta consisting of lobster tails, shrimp, clams, scallops, angel hair pasta, clam sauce, fresh parsley, garlic and olive oil is often a feature — along with a cold seafood salad with lobster, scallops, shrimp and calamari. Lois will typically pair these delicacies with “a very plain salad and garlic bread,” so the seafood remains the star. However, many friends and family — her husband especially — also look forward to Lois’ homemade Italian cookies. “More friends come to my house than anywhere on Christmas Eve,” she says, laughing.  “We serve a big tray of Italian cookies. I make them all. My husband loves Italian fig cookies, so our feast doesn’t contain just fish — there are salads, breads, cookies and roasted chestnuts, and wine.”

Michael Scognamiglio, another Italian American and the owner and chef of Bacco in Mount Pleasant, shares similar memories regarding Christmas past. Michael’s father was originally from Venice and moved to the United States at age 10, “staying in contact with the family in Italy,” he says. Though Michael’s family did not always prepare seven varieties, seafood was consistently the meal for the night before Christmas. The family relocated to South Carolina from New Jersey when he was still a kid, he explains, where some items were harder to find — but the menu was still memorable, despite Michael being a picky eater. 

“We’d do a fry of some sort — either bay scallops, shrimp or calamari. We’d have pasta at the end, like clams with linguine,” he says, adding ruefully that he didn’t eat the calamari and preferred plain pasta. 

Honoring Tradition 

These days, Michael gives his patrons at Bacco in Mount Pleasant a more upscale version of the meal he recalls from yesteryear, but seafood and celebratory meals are not reserved only for Christmas. After Michael opened his restaurant in 2007, he realized he wanted to take it in a creative direction and “have authentic meals that would be celebrated in Italy.”

Seafood aficionados look forward to spring and fall at Bacco, when Michael and his team host “seafood week,” as he calls it: a special week when 100% of the menu is seafood-based. “This is something we do to celebrate living on the coast with local resources, enough to have a whole menu,” he says. “We’ve done this for around 10 years.”

Nevertheless, the Feast of the Seven Fishes — which takes place on Dec. 23 at Bacco so that Michael’s staff can enjoy Christmas eve with their near and dear — is something uniquely special. The “eve of the eve” meal consists of an elegant seafood-based menu that Michael would never have condoned as a youngster — but that Bacco customers find tantalizing and worth revisiting each year, many of them since the feast’s inception in 2012. The dinner is made up of several courses, “at least five or six,” and features as many as 10 fish or shellfish, according to Michael. 

The celebration, which is reservation-only and “usually capped around 55 people,” begins the night of Dec. 23 at 6 p.m. with an assortment of appetizers at the bar, some with seafood, and plenty of mingling. Guests look forward to sitting down to dinner around 6:45 p.m. and indulging in the multiple courses, including antipasti and pasta, plus citrus-based desserts to cleanse the palate. Complementary wines also are recommended. Michael walks from table to table during the meal, ensuring his guests are satisfied with the feast. “I’ll come out during the dinner, talk about the courses, and make sure everyone is enjoying everything,” he says. 

Christmas dishes at Bacco include the seafood salad that both he and Lois’ family hold in high regard — “a mix of shrimp, scallops, usually clams, mussels, and octopus with olive oil and lemon juice, zest and parsley” — and a fried item, usually shrimp tempura or calamari. But perhaps the most notable and traditional item on the Bacco Christmas menu is the baccala mantecato, featuring, in the words of Lois, one of the feast’s “old school” fish: cod. 

“We do a salted cod, which is a traditional fish, soaked and rehydrated, cooked with milk and then strained and whipped with olive oil so it’s almost like a spread,” Michael explains. “And then we serve that with crostinis.” 

Christmas 2021 Plans

Bacco’s Feast of the Seven Fishes was canceled last year due to the COVID-19 pandemic, so Michael and the rest of the staff are looking forward to hosting the elaborate meal once again this year. “It’s become a tradition for a lot of our customers to celebrate with us,” he says, beaming. 

Meanwhile, at the Rogers household, Lois is waiting to see whether her kids, living in various areas of the United States, will make the trek to spend Christmas Eve with her in South Carolina. But she adds that even if they don’t, she’s going to create a small seafood feast just for herself. 

“If you can believe it, my husband doesn’t eat seafood,” she confesses. “His dad was an avid fisherman and made him clean and scale fish growing up, so he doesn't even want to look at fish! One year [when we lived in Arizona] my kids didn’t come, and I still made a small seven-fish dinner just for me. I told my husband it’s just part of who I am.”

And for so many Italian-Americans, it’s just a part of who they are too.