The Feast - WV Living Magazine

In Fairmont the Feast of the Seven Fishes Festival is a time for family, friends, and food.

Written by Shay Maunz | Photographed by Carla Witt Ford

Every Christmas Eve in America, Italian American grandmothers stand over the stove, stirring giant pots of fish stew. Uncles toss chunks of calamari into a deep pan filled with popping, sizzling oil. Aunts arrange dried, salted cod on a platter, turning it this way and that in a losing battle to make it look appealing. Kids are tasked with setting the table with all the dishes, bowls, and utensils the family will need to devour a decadent spread with many courses.

This is the Feast of the Seven Fishes, the traditional Italian American seafood feast that takes place on Christmas Eve. In any culture the recipe for the ideal holiday meal is always the same: one part friends and family, one part decadent and delicious foods that you don’t see any other time of year, and just enough pomp and circumstance to make the whole thing feel really special. The Feast of the Seven Fishes is no different; it just includes more seafood than most Christmas dinners.

No one is quite sure how exactly the Feast of the Seven Fishes came to be. Certainly it originated in the southern part of Italy, near the coast, but the tradition is practiced more often—and with more gusto—here in America than it is back in the old country. It probably has something to do with the fact that Catholics abstain from eating meat on the eve of certain holy days, including Christmas. But no one is quite sure why the feast includes that particular number of fish. For the seven sacraments? The seven days it took God to make the world? The Seven hills of Rome? For most Italian Americans the tradition is so deeply ingrained that the reasoning doesn’t matter. And the more fish the better, anyway.

That was the thought Shannon and Robert Tinnell had over a decade ago, when they started the Feast of the Seven Fishes Festival in Fairmont. The husband and wife both have Italian heritage; and Robert’s family, especially, has held a big seafood feast every Christmas Eve. In 2005 the couple published a comic novel called “Feast of the Seven Fishes: The Collected Comic Strip and Italian Holiday Cookbook.” In it Robert tells the story of a big Italian family preparing the big holiday feast, and Shannon provides recipes for traditional Italian dishes.

“After the book came out, we got to talking with people in town,” Shannon says. “And we said we have this book and we know all about the feast, and we don’t have any kind of festival in Fairmont. Why don’t we do one?” Every year since, on the second weekend in December, thousands of people have descended on Fairmont to toast to the Christmas season with good cheer—and a lot of fish. Fairmont is an Italian American hub in West Virginia so it was a natural fit. “The Italian heritage is really big here,” says Jackie Fitch, the festival’s event planner. “It all started when the Italians came over to work in the coal mines and made their homes in Fairmont and Clarksburg. So all these years later we have all these people with Italian heritage and a lot of Italian traditions in the community.”