Mangia! (x7)

LEXINGTON -- Marianne and Angelo Tortola live in a big gray and red Colonial at the end of a long lamppost-lined driveway. Every day at 4:30 p.m., you can hear the Star Spangled Banner from nearby Hanscom Air Force Base. Other than that, this spot is quiet. Marianne cooks dinner most nights and the Tortolas always eat well. But on Christmas Eve, they feast on fish, or rather on seven fishes.

What they and many other Italian - Americans call the Feast of the Seven Fishes (some people say it represents the seven sacraments of the Catholic Church), is as much a tradition for her as it was for her parents' family in the old country. "I've spoken with people in Italy about it," she says. "The important thing is that they eat fish on Christmas Eve but I don't think they count how many they're having."

The Tortolas do have seven courses of fish (sometimes even eight), which include old-fashioned "crabbies," made with crabmeat and cheddar; fried dough balls stuffed with baccala or anchovies from a recipe of the host's mother, Donata Tortola; Marianne's own squid meatballs; cousin Sue Cotoni's salt cod and potatoes made into baccala; sister-in-law Marietta Tortola's smelts ; and two recipes from Marianne's late mother, Anne Pizzi -- for lobster sauce and baked shrimp.

The Tortolas both have roots in the southern Italian town of Miranda, a place Angelo describes as "a little village stuck up on a rock in the mountains." Angelo lived in Miranda until he was 10, then moved with his parents and brother to Venezuela. He came here to go to Wentworth Institute of Technology and then Northeastern University. Marianne's parents also came from Miranda; she grew up in Waltham.

Marianne learned to cook by watching her mother. When she was a child, cooking was "a way of life," she says. Her parents had a sub shop in Waltham, called Marianne's, which they named for her. "I worked there ever since I was 7. I stood on a box and made change then graduated to making food." She taught elementary school at St. Mary of the Assumption Church in Brookline before Carl, now 26, and Susanne, 24, were born. Angelo is a principal at Venture Technologies, an electronic engineering company in North Billerica.

On Christmas Eve, Angelo lights the fireplace and Marianne turns up the Nat King Cole and Kenny G Christmas albums. Marianne decorates the house with an elaborate nativity scene, candles, snowman, and Santa Claus. She shops in advance but doesn't start cooking until that morning. "I get up at 7, just like always, and just plan to stay in all day and cook," she says.

The scene set, the Tortola s' guests, mostly family, nibble on the crabbies, bubbling and brown on English muffins. Vuticigli -- the fried dough balls -- are also passed around. Angelo's parents, Berardino and Donata Tortola, come from Belmont. Ber ardino, 80, worked all his life as a stonemason. He still does building projects, makes capicola and prosciutto in his basement, and in the summer grows squash and sells hundreds of blossoms a week to A. Russo and Sons in Watertown. Donata, 78, a former seamstress , still cooks and sews.

In the dining room, the luxurious lobster sauce that Marianne learned from her late mother is ladled over aunt Sue Pizzi's homemade spaghetti; squid meatballs are served on the side.

Next is cousin Sue 's baccala, made by layering soaked salt cod and thinly sliced potatoes with parsley, tomatoes, bread crumbs, garlic, and lots of olive oil. The dish is baked until the top is crisp and golden. The recipe comes from Marianne's mother's 92-year - old first cousin. After the baccala come breaded smelts, which are coated with eggs and bread crumbs and oven-fried; they're a specialty of Marianne's sister-in-law Marietta . The last course is baked shrimp, accompanied by a big green salad. By the time the shrimp comes out," says the hostess, "everybody is stuffed. All they want is a taste."

As if the seven dishes aren't enough, Marianne or Angelo might throw in another dish. "Sometimes when we go to the fish store and we see something that looks good -- like oysters or clams -- we get it ," says Marianne. Clams are steamed first, then chopped and stuffed into their shells with a bread crumb topping.

In their hometown in Italy, fish was scarce. "We were in the mountains," says Angelo, "so eating fish was special, something to do for occasions." Marianne says that as long as her parents were eating eels on Christmas, they felt they were following tradition. She remembers going to fish markets in the North End to buy the slithery things. "They kept them in a big bathtub."

After the feast, the family sits around the table eating chestnuts and fruit and drinking Angelo's homemade wine. He and seven friends make 250 gallons a year in the basement. Ricotta pie, one of two desserts, comes from Modern Pastry Shop in the North End; Angelo's almond biscotti accompany it.

Marietta packs up the leftovers and organizes the dishwashing, which everyone chips in to do. Afterward the family sits around the living room on leather sofas opening presents and watching Chevy Chase in " Christmas Vacation. " "We talk and digest and keep drinking wine," says Marianne. Whoever is still awake attends midnight Mass at St. Brigid's Church in Lexington.

Cooking, feasting, and dining together is satisfying and comforting to the family. "To make wine, and grow gardens, and cook this food is so important to the older generation," says Marianne. "They love to eat these things and they have passed it down to all of us.

"Now we do it all for them and hope that our kids will do it for us and keep going. Staying in touch with our Italian roots is something that our families have done for generations. The tradition flavors everything."