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My husband’s Italian family always had the Christmas version of ‘Sunday Sauce’ with spaghetti, for the main Christmas dinner (at about Noon. Mom had been making it since the day before.)

Then in the evening, they’d have vegetable soup and home-made hoagies.

For Christmas Eve, they had Pizza. (For 26 years, now, my Christmas Eve dinner has been Pizza - I don’t think that will never change, it’s sort of sacred.)

He won’t give me the Christmas Sauce recipe - he says it’s useless to even try, unless you have tomato sauce made from tomatoes grown by his own family :-)

NYC Rao’s features its famous Feast of the Seven Fishes for Christmas. The Feast consists of seven different seafood dishes eaten on Christmas Eve. At Rao’s Caesars Palace location, the Italian tradition continues with three courses served on Christmas Eve and Christmas day. The Vigilia di Natale, as it’s known, features a choice of appetizer, pasta and entree for $65.

The seafood salad at Rao's is just one of the dishes you can order for the Feast of the Seven Fishes. Here’s a look at what you can get.

<><>For an appetizer, choose from baked Little Neck clams stuffed with seasoned bread crumbs;
deep-fried calamari, shrimp, cod and julienne zucchini with remoulade and marinara sauce;
a seafood salad made with crab, shrimp, calamari and lobster along with diced celery, Gaeta olives and parsley in a citronette;
Baccalla salad made with salted cod tossed with sweet cherry peppers, capers and olives in a lemon dressing;
or octopus salad with celery, fingerling potatoes and octopus tossed in a warm lemon vinaigrette.

<><> For the pasta dish, you have three choices —
linguine and clams tossed with garlic, white wine and parsley and topped with tomatoes;
lobster Fra Divolo in a spicy marinara sauce
or Tagliolini Fruiti Di Mare with a mix of clams, mussels, calamari, scallops and shrimp in a light tomato sauce.

<><> As an entree, choose from
shrimp scampi,
shrimp Fra Diavolo,
fillet of sole Franchaise with sautéed fennel in a white wine and butter sauce
and salmon Beurre Blanc over sautéed spinach.

Rao’s at Caesars Palace, 3570 Las Vegas Blvd. S. For reservations, call 702-731-7110.

Just a note about ‘Sunday Sauce’:

My husband is just now lecturing me about the difference between ‘sauce’ and ‘gravy’, among Italians.

He says that ‘Up North’ (to him, as a PA boy, that would be New England) some Italians call pasta sauce ‘gravy’.

My husband says, ‘No!. Gravy is meat drippings that you put on mashed potatoes. Sauce is Sauce! All gravies are sauces, but not all sauces are gravies’.

(This sorta Southern Girl is very confused; but here’s another expert opinion:

https://thetakeout.com/recipe-sunday-sauce-pasta-jersey-family-1831469548

One of my great aunts on my mother’s side was an Italian war bride. Sometimes after church we went to their house for Sunday dinner. She made Sunday sauce with sausage, meatballs, and roast beef in it. Occasionally it had srolled up steak stuffed with spinach, bread crumbs, and pinenuts. I have often joked I must have been Italian in another life, because Italian food is so comforting to me, but actually it was my auntie’s cooking. She put a wholeclotta love in the food she cooked.