Good morning, it’s Wednesday, Christmas Eve.
We’re going to keep things short and sweet today, starting off by reminding everyone of our holiday schedule.
There will be no “Rise and Shine” tomorrow, Christmas Day, through New Year’s Day on Jan. 1, 2026. Then we will dip our toe back into the water on Friday, Jan. 2, 2026, just to get things started. Then we’ll take two days off again to recover. Then we’ll be back to our regularly scheduled programming for real on Monday, Jan. 5, 2026.
It’s Christmas Eve, which I think we all know quite a bit about – even those of us who don’t observe.
A little less well known is the fact that it is also Feast of the Seven Fishes, Festa dei Sette Pesci, which is an Italian-American traditional observation of Christmas Eve (AKA La Vigilia di Natale (“the Vigil of the Nativity”) that is meant to commemorate the wait for the birth of the Baby Jesus at midnight.
This is also connected to the Roman Catholic tradition of abstaining from the consumption of meat on a feast day – traditionally, the 24-hour period prior to Christmas was a fast. Breaking the fast with fish was affordable and accessible. The fast no longer persists, but the fish feast tradition lasted through the ages.
As to why seven different kinds of fish, it’s not entirely know where this number came from (seems kinda of arbitrary to me, why not eight? Or 15?) Some speculate that it might stem from the Church’s seven Sacraments or maybe it’s meant to represent Rome’s Seven Hills.
Creating seven different fish dishes is a big lift – even for Nonnas who love cooking. I have a friend who killed all the birds – I mean fishes – with one stone by preparing a Spanish Paella (for the purists among you, there is an Italian version known as Paella Algherese, which relies on small, pearl-shaped pasta instead of rice).
If you’re intent on going the full seven-dish route, you might consider preparing Baccalà (salted cod), which is very traditional seven fishes fare, as well as eel, calamari, clams, shrimp, sardines, octopus, lobster, and/or anchovies.
In my mixed religion household, we’re having a few people over to celebrate and going the Italian (ordering in) route, with eggplant and chicken parm, pasta, and salad. There will also be bacon-wrapped scallops as an appetizer and holiday cookies in abundance.
However you celebrate, assuming you do, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season and I look forward to reconnecting with you on the flip side – 2026 can’t possibly be any worse than 2025 was, right?
Fingers crossed.
I’m grateful that you give me the space to rant and share memories and musings and start your day off here with me. Happy holidays to all, and to all a good night!
There’s a wind advisory in place from early this morning to noon, with gusts of up to 50 mph possible. It will be partly cloudy with temperatures topping out in the high 30s.
In the headlines…
The Supreme Court refused to allow President Trump to deploy hundreds of National Guard troops in the Chicago area over the objection of Illinois officials, casting doubt on the viability of similar deployments in other American cities.
About 350 National Guard troops will arrive in New Orleans before New Year’s Eve, Gov. Jeff Landry of Louisiana said, and they will stay through at least February.
A coalition of 19 states sued to block the Trump administration’s plan to strip federal funding from hospitals providing gender-related care for minors, a policy that would effectively shut down any health care providers that failed to comply.
That plan, announced by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., would cut off all Medicaid and Medicare payments — which make up a major share of hospital revenue — to any facility that provides minors with gender-related treatments in the country.
The Justice Department released a large trove of records related to Jeffrey Epstein, including allegations about the late financier’s ties to President Donald Trump.
Most appearances of Trump’s name in the set of files just released by the Justice Department came from news reports and other documents. But some deal directly with the relationship between the one-time friends.
In a 2020 email released by the Justice Department, a federal prosecutor informed colleagues that President Trump’s name appeared on the flight logs for Epstein’s private jet “many more times than previously has been reported (or that we were aware).”
The release was by far the DOJ’s largest in its effort to comply with the Epstein Files Transparency Act, and contained the most new information, along with claims about Trump that the department said are “unfounded and false.”
Two explosions at a nursing home northeast of Philadelphia killed a resident and an employee, and injured 20 others, officials said.
Pop star Taylor Swift, known for hits such as “Anti-Hero” and “Style,” donated $1 million to hunger relief ahead of the Christmas holiday.
The “Out of the Woods” singer also gave $1 million to the American Heart Association, the organization said on X, “in honor of her father, Scott Swift, whose heart condition she spoke about earlier this year.
In an Empire Report op-ed, Gov. Kathy Hochul decried Trump’s decision to halt wind projects along the New England and New York coast, saying: “In one reckless move, he put thousands of good-paying jobs and New York’s energy future at risk.”
New York has become the third state to outlaw anonymous child abuse calls, under one of dozens of bills signed by Hochul ahead of a Dec. 31 deadline.
A “Marty Supreme” showing took a political turn when supermarket and oil baron John Catsimatidis, who has a small role in the movie, invited both Hochul and her Republican rival, Bruce Blakeman.
Conservative Party leaders are open to uniting behind Republican Blakeman’s gubernatorial campaign – despite his position on abortion – in the hopes of avoiding the type of split that’s doomed the GOP in past elections
Hochul will deliver her 2026 State of the State address on Tuesday, Jan. 13, at 1 p.m. at Hart Theater at the Egg in Albany, where she’s been having them after several years in the traditional setting of the Assembly chamber in Albany.
In 2021, Hochul promised that she would begin to grant clemencies on a rolling basis, a departure from previous governors who typically granted clemencies only at the end of each year, but she has issued few pardons and commutations.
Hochul for the second time vetoed a bill to give communities more warning before hospitals close, blocking a measure that health advocates say is critical as federal funding cuts threaten to push financially struggling hospitals toward shuttering.
A Democrat challenging state Comptroller Thomas P. DiNapoli for their party’s nomination in next year’s race released a report this week critical of the incumbent’s handling of the state’s public pension fund.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer got the worst approval rating out of all top US political leaders in a new survey. The New York Democrat notched just a 28% job approval rating, the lowest of 13 politicians named in the Gallup Poll released yesterday.
Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani appointed the FDNY’s second female commissioner, naming Lillian Bonsignore, a former emergency medical services chief, to take the helm at the agency after he is sworn in on Jan. 1.
She is the first openly gay person to lead the department and only its second female commissioner, as well the first person who headed E.M.S. to run the department, a Mamdani spokeswoman said.
Bonsignore’s appointment comes as Mayor Eric Adams made a separate, puzzling announcement naming his own new fire commissioner – Mark Guerra – to run out the final days of his tenure at City Hall.
Mamdani announced that he will be retaining the acting commissioners of the Department of Sanitation, Javier Lojan, and the Office of Emergency Management, Zachary Iscol, on an interim basis.
The mayor-elect’s well-funded transition — which had $1.8 million on hand as December dawned — will pay for the massive “Inauguration of a New Era” expected to draw up to 50,000 New Yorkers on Jan. 1.
Mayor Adams whipped out a cigar as he boasted about downing Scotch on a recent trip out of the country and made clear he won’t miss his current gig.
The New York City chapter of the Democratic Socialists of America plans to endorse up to seven Assembly candidates and two congressional candidates in next year’s midterm elections.
The family of a Queens man killed by NYPD officers on Sunday says he was acting erratically after smoking marijuana and they hoped police would talk to him, not shoot him.
Thirty officers disqualified from the New York Police Department because they failed psychological exams or background checks will stay on the job, according to an agreement between the city and their union.
The New York State Nurses Association (NYSNA) voted overwhelmingly to authorize a strike for 20,000 nurses in NYC — a move made just two weeks before their contract expires.
The Port Authority is preparing to increase the charge for drivers to pick up and drop off passengers at the airports, a move that is being contested by Uber and ride-share drivers.
Use of force by members of the NYPD surged 20% last year to 11,746 incidents – a record high since the department began detailed record-keeping on the issue in 2016, according to a police department report quietly posted online in recent days,
Police are searching for a man accused of assaulting a 10-year-old boy in front of an apartment building in Brooklyn and fleeing in a silver minivan.
After more than two months in which the City of Albany’s Community Police Review Board was unable to conduct business following the resignations of three members, the panel is once again capable of achieving quorum.
It remains to be seen how long newly minted Schenectady City Councilman Justin Chaires will be sidelined after Mayor Gary McCarthy filed for a temporary injunction as part of his lawsuit challenging Chaires’ appointment last week by the governing body.
Albany NanoTech founder Alain Kaloyeros pleaded guilty to a federal conspiracy to commit wire fraud charge to resolve the so-called “Buffalo Billion” bid-rigging case that briefly sent him to prison and ended his run as the state’s nano czar.
A funding pool of $2 million has been passed down to Troy nonprofits as part of Project RISE, a state-backed program to provide opportunities for young people in communities impacted by violence.
An Albany man who was shot by police last week after he allegedly opened fire on two officers has now been accused of starting a fire at an apartment building, breaking into an apartment, strangling a woman and threatening her child.
In his first Saratoga County Court appearance yesterday, the keyboardist for the popular children’s music group, The Zucchini Brothers, agreed to submit to a pre-plea report with probation in order to resolve his sexual abuse charge.
The 65-year-old man whose body was found when an employee opened a local Stewart’s store last week died of natural causes,
Some bags of Market 32 shrimp are no longer for sale due to potential radioactive contamination, according to the U.S. Food & Drug Administration, police said.
The leader of the not-for-profit Fort Hudson Health System said the organization will be forced to sell its nursing home to a group of for-profit investors for an undisclosed price due to a lack of Medicaid reimbursements that have caused a $2.5 million shortfall.
Photo credit: George Fazio.
