Eating Christmas: Devin Kate Pope cherishes the Feast of Seven Fishes — or sometimes Costco shrimp

There’s something fishy about The Show's next Eating Christmas essay.

Arizona writer Devin Kate Pope performed her story live at Crescent Ballroom in Phoenix.

DEVIN KATE POPE: When Facebook and I were young and innocent, one of, one of my favorite lines to use in the about section was “Irish with Italian taste buds.”

Most of my ancestors fled Ireland in the 1850s, but more recently, Angelo Paso came over from Rome, moved to Scranton, Penn., married Josephine Petrario, and had my step-great grandfather, Leo. He died before I was born, so the little I know about him is important.

His Nona kept a pot of red sauce on the stove at all times. Leo loved my mom and she adored him. My mom was the only grandchild welcomed into the kitchen to make the Feast of the Seven Fishes every year.

Leo, his Nona, and my mom, starting early in the morning on Dec. 24, prepared the traditional dishes – baked clams, fried smelts, salted whitefish, the sea snail, spongilli, mussels, calamari and lobster. I don't know if lobster was on the menu.

Devin Kate Pope

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Handout

The Pasos weren't wealthy, and there were a lot of them. But I do know that there is shrimp. Because they were my mom's job. Deveining pounds of crustaceans didn't sound fun to me, but my mom didn't complain.

Even 30 years later, she glowed with pride, remembering the plate of her handiwork going around the table. She grew up, left home to start her family. Intermittently talked with her parents, but on many Christmas Eves, she and I made the Feast of the Seven Fishes.

In the kitchen, she told me about cooking with Leo and eating the feast. It sounded like the one day in the calendar year she truly believed in love, so real she could smell it and eat it.

As I grew up, it was sometimes the Feast of the Four Fishes. Smelt and sea snail are hard to source in Phoenix. And today it's devolved into being just the feast of the shrimp cocktail ring from Costco.

But it's a tradition among few that hasn't slipped away, a prized catch I hold tight. I was taught that the seven fish represent the seven gifts of the Holy Spirit. Which you can remember thanks to a jaunty tune that I will now sing for you.

Wisdom, understanding, counsel, and fortitude, knowledge, piety, fear of the Lord, you always gotta end on fear. It's, It's the Catholic way.

So you eat the fish, you receive the gifts, but who can prove the origins of food traditions? Piety may have been the genesis, or maybe some guy needed to sell a bunch of fish before Christmas.

Either way, when December rolls around, I need wisdom to survive the holidays. I crave an understanding of my family, and I fear the times when fewer people are sitting at the table. If eating seven varieties of fish helps with this, sign me up.

This year we'll be at my mother-in-law's and she hates fish, but we'll be eating tamales, so don't feel bad for me. I will make the Feast of the Seven Fishes again someday.

I'll cram my kitchen with an ungodly amount of sea creatures, give each of my kids a job. And tell them about Leo, who made Christmas Eve a gift, and taught their grandma, who taught me to bake clams, fry smelts. And double check the shrimp cocktail is defrosted.