By Kristen Massad

In my family, Christmas Eve was never about gifts or getting to bed early to wait for Santa. It's about food. We always focused on cooking and enjoying a long evening of feasting together. As part of a large Italian-American family, our tradition has always been the Feast of the Seven Fishes.

There is a lot of debate over the origin of the feast, also known as the Vigil. But it's thought to come from the Roman Catholic tradition of abstaining from meat and fasting. No one knows the exact meaning behind the specific number seven, but one theory is that it comes from the seven sacraments.

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Source: http://www.dallasnews.com/