It's Christmas Eve night and after a hectic day of preparation for the Big Day tomorrow, I finally have a few minutes to relax.

I'll be making a turkey with traditional American-style side dishes and pumpkin pie tomorrow. But it wasn't always that way.

When I was growing up, my family — like all Italian-American families I knew — had our big celebration on Christmas Eve, not Christmas Day. In fact, it wasn't until I went away to college that I realized other people actually celebrated the holiday ON Christmas Day. And opened gifts on Christmas Day.

Our Christmas celebration centered on something called the Dinner of the Seven Fishes on Christmas Eve. And we had — you guessed it — fish!

Even though the dinner is called the "seven" fishes, we never let that hold us back from serving 12, 15, sometimes 20 different fish dishes. Heck no! The more the better. And the more exotic the species of fish, the better, too.

Number one on the menu was always squid stewed in tomato sauce. Yuk, you say! Squid! Well, you've probably eaten squid. You just know it by its more sophisticated-sounding Italian name, calamari.

We also had eel, usually sauteed or stewed. It's actually not bad. In fact, in many cultures (Italian, Japanese, Chinese to name a few) it is considered a delicacy.

Of course we had baccala. Didn't everyone? Baccala is salted, dried cod fish. You had to soak it in water before cooking it to soften it and remove some of the salt.

Also on the menu were fried smelts (fresh sardines), salmon, tuna, baked whitefish, fried halibut, and fish stew.

Often we'd prepare the same type of fish in multiple different ways. Just to prove we could, I think.

And no Christmas Eve was complete without capellini pasta with anchovy sauce.

Anything with gills and fins, we cooked it.

Everyone in our family agreed that the "seven fishes" symbolized something important. We just couldn't agree on what.

Some think it symbolizes the seven days it took Joseph and Mary to get to Bethlehem. Others think it symbolizes the seven sacraments in the Catholic church. There are other theories, as well. No doubt the controversy will continue long after I am gone.

After the seven fishes dinner some people would go to midnight Mass and/or visit relatives. Usually we opened gifts sometime between midnight and 4:00 AM.

So what did we do on Christmas Day? Slept late. Opened any gifts we may have missed the night before. And ate leftover fish.

Merry Christmas.