monkeys and ponies

It is, indeed, an Italian tradition. My German-American Great-Great-Aunt Tessie used to visit my Italian-American grandmother for Christmas every year and stay for a few days. She hated fish. She said that the whole thing with no meat on Fridays that lasted up until Vatican II in the 1960s was because of the popes from Genoa hundreds of years ago who wanted to help out the poor starving fisherman in Genoa. No amount of historical information, logic, or begging could convince my grandmother to serve meat either on Friday or on Christmas Eve.