About the Event

The Feast of the Seven Fishes is best understood as an Italian-American Christmas Eve tradition with roots in Southern Italian Catholic customs—rather than as one single, standardized feast brought intact from Italy.

The foundation is La Vigilia, the Christmas Eve vigil. Traditionally, Catholics abstained from meat before major feast days, including Christmas. In Southern Italy, particularly in coastal areas where seafood was plentiful, families prepared fish and seafood for the Christmas Eve meal. Foods such as baccalà (salt cod), calamari, eel, anchovies, clams, smelts, shrimp and other seafood became associated with the evening. 

Where the “Seven Fishes” part came from

This is where the history gets particularly interesting for your event. There is no established historical explanation for why the number is seven. Michael Di Giovine, an anthropology professor at West Chester University who has researched the Feast specifically, says the historical origins of the seven-fish count are unknown. Suggested explanations include the Seven Sacraments, seven days of creation, or other religious symbolism—but none has been established as the origin. 

And Italian families didn't necessarily serve seven. Some served seven, nine, thirteen or simply a large assortment of seafood. Thirteen is sometimes associated with Jesus and the twelve Apostles. 

It became distinctly Italian-American

During the great waves of Italian immigration in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, large numbers of Southern Italians settled in American cities. They brought their Christmas Eve seafood traditions with them. In America, those family customs evolved into the much more recognizable celebration eventually called the “Feast of the Seven Fishes.” National Geographic describes the modern feast as something that evolved over the last century into a uniquely Italian-American tradition and a way of maintaining family and ancestral connections. 

That distinction is important: an Italian may certainly recognize a Christmas Eve seafood dinner or La Vigilia, particularly in Southern Italy, without recognizing the American name “Feast of the Seven Fishes.” Even an Abruzzo-born writer quoted her mother as saying she had never heard the meal called that in Italy. 

About the Producer

Barbara Ann Zippi is an award-winning communications professional, publisher, journalist, event producer, and lifelong advocate for Italian-American heritage. She currently serves as Associate Publisher of the Delaware Valley Italian American Herald and is the founder of Ciao Bella Living Italian Style, celebrating Italian and Italian-American culture, traditions, food, heritage, and travel through print, television, social media, special events, and cultural experiences.

With more than four decades of experience in public relations, media, marketing, and special-event production, Barbara has created and produced major community celebrations, cultural festivals, tourism initiatives, fundraising events, and promotional campaigns throughout the Delaware Valley. Her background in entertainment began with Al Alberts Showcase, where she worked in television production, public relations, promotions, talent, sponsors, and special events. She later founded the Italian American Heritage Festival at Rose Tree Park, which grew from approximately 3,000 attendees in its first year to more than 12,000.

Barbara's passion for Italian heritage is deeply personal. Her family roots trace to Loreto Aprutino in Abruzzo, Italy, and today she divides her cultural work between the Italian-American community here at home and her continuing relationships in Italy. Through Ciao Bella Living Italian Style and Adventures in Abruzzo & Beyond, she works to preserve traditions, reconnect families with their heritage, and introduce others to the Italy she has known and loved throughout her life.

As producer of Taste of the Feast of the Seven Fishes, Barbara is bringing together those worlds—food, family, heritage, entertainment, community, and tradition—while giving a beloved Italian-American Christmas Eve custom a fresh new presentation. More than an event, the Feast is designed as a celebration of the traditions handed down from one generation to the next and an opportunity to make new memories while ensuring those traditions continue.

Preserving the past. Celebrating the present. Creating traditions for the next generation.