Dec. 24 has always been my favorite day of the year. Until I was 12, family members numbering in the dozens would descend upon my grandparents’ tiny two bedroom apartment in Troy, New York, for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. Although the Italian tradition typically means a day of fasting followed by a meatless banquet at night, my family took the idea of “abstinence” with a hefty grain of salt. Or at least a generous dose of saltwater.

From noon until the wee hours of the next morning, we’d come together to eat, wrestle, cuddle, and cry, the cacophony of sounds competing with The Benny Hill Show and Rowan & Martin’s Laugh In blaring from the TV in the parlor. I felt the most loved and whole I’d ever feel in my entire life in that marathon span of hours together.