(A new topic stimulated by a discussion of a specific abstinence obligation, now, um, losing steam in the "Catholic Living in the Modern World" forum (q.v.): "Fasting and Abstinence this week - Christmas Eve [...]".)

So we have our own Southern inspired Christmas Eve dinner of Fried fish, shrimp, oysters and hush puppies. :)

Yum!  I'd certainly endorse such a Christmas Eve dinner.   I'd even volunteer to take on a big share of the burden of preparing such a dinner for my extended family.

I thought that it might be fun to adapt the Italian "La Vigilia", which has been Americanized into the Italoämerican "Festa dei Sette Pesci" (English "Feast of the 7 Fishes")

• , to devise a menu of recipes that avoid the southern Italian (and frequently Spanish) obsession with tomato sauce
• .  But then I lost control of my inclination toward thoroughness.
  
  Sooo, one might fill out such a menu, e.g., with some of these:
  · Basque seafood salad (Spanish Ensalada de Marisco a la Vasca), featuring cooked shrimp, cooked lobster meat, and cooked crab meat;
  · fried calimary[sic 1973] (English "squid") steaks, bought precut & pretenderized from a fish-processor, as a frugal substitute for abalone steaks; they're prepared by light breading, then sautéing in clarified butter only enough to toast the breading and warm them thro'out, before serving (they arguably don't require "cooking" per se);
  · crab au gratin;
  · crab-avocado imperial (crab in a cream-&-cheese sauce, baked under breading in a halved avocado);
  · crab cakes (it hurts deeply to accept that they're typically better in Maryland than in Florida);
  · crab Rangoon;
  · Neapolitan grilled eel or Puglian roasted eel (Italian capitone alla griglia or capitone arrosto, respectively), altho' considering its reportedly oily or fatty flesh, I wouldn't rule out stir-frying it in a Chinese style (which would have the advantage of occupying a burner for only a relatively short time);
  · lobster egg rolls or shrimp lumpia (Filipino spring rolls), or featured ingredients vice versa;
  · lobster thermidor ("crawfish thermidor" to old-school native Floridans);
  · salmon croquettes;
  · sardine quiche (packed in olive oil);
  · seafood chowder (cream or tomato based, altho' I expressed my preference above);
  · shrimp with yellow rice (less forgiving than the similar arroz con pollo, becauses it poses the additional challenge of avoiding overcooking when starting with raw shrimp, altho' one might choose to stir ready-to-eat cocktail shrimp into rice that's nearly ready to serve);
  · fish casseroles (baked), which in Atlantic-coastal & northern European customs are surprisingly consistent in being made mainly from potatoes, onions, and either carp or rehydrated salted-&-dried cod (the latter marketed , in many European languages, under names that are very similar to the "bakaiļao" of the Basques, whose commercial-fishing boats were numerous in the Western North Atlantic during the Eurocentric Age of Exploration), altho' I'd expect to substitute flash-frozen fish fillets (cooks in the U.S.A. who accept farmed fish might substitute tilapia).
  
  But now that I've devised a list of dishes, Advent 2015 has passed.  Maybe next year.
  
  -------
  Note *: Or "Feast of the Seven Fishes" (for people suffering from the silly compulsion to spell out unambiguous single-digit quantities).  It's a "feast" in the sense of an extensive meal, not in the sense of the liturgical calendar.   1 possible starting point for tracking down information: <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feast_of_the_Seven_Fishes>
  
  Note #: Perhaps I was psychologically scarred during my culinarily impressionable youth, by being served a few too many meals from cans labeled "Chef Boy-Ar-Dee".  That brand name being a respelling, as a concession to U.S.-based manufacturing & marketing, of the family name of real-life (who knew!?) Italian-native chef Ettore Boiardi.

I also make a shrimp, mushroom, and wild rice casserole.  It is very kid friendly for those picky eaters or NO kids who don't have much experience eating fish or shell fish.

I also have a traditional Southern fried fish that is gluten free, i.e breaded with cornmeal.  

And for my kids who just cannot live without macaroni and cheese, I make a mac and cheese with lobster meat or sometimes crab.  They love that.

Even when I was NO, Friday was always fish.....but then again, we Southern folks could eat fish and shellfish at every meal.  :)  

Snow crab, asparagus, baked potato.