Eating fish on Fridays

menu reminder of weekly fish dinner in the six weeks before Easter (click image for full size view)

There are places and times and groups of people for whom a main dish of fish, rather than customary habits of eating meat, is considered a minor expression of personal sacrifice. Sometimes this is practiced all year in communal dinners or at the private household level, but other times this is undertaken as a group experience or private dietary habit only in the six week period leading up to the Christian celebration of Easter, when the resurrection of the rabbi Jesus Christ is commemorated every year in springtime (northern hemisphere) around the time of the Jewish commemoration of Passover.

School districts, particularly when there are many Catholics in the surrounding catchment area, as well as other public institutions like elderly care facilities, or hospitals, for example will also commonly include fish on the menu in acknowledgment of those dietary practices for those who wish to follow the fish on Friday custom.

Deep-fried foods like french fries (FF abbreviation in the miniature menu card, above) and battered fish (very often perch and/or smelt and/or cod - at least here in the Midwest of USA) once were rare treats because of the amount of oil needed to do the frying, and for the rich taste of fatty and crunchy food. But with the public education of dietary health and concerns about high cholesterol and heart healthy foods more generally, the public dinners like this one advertised, often provide baked fish as an alternative to the batter-dipped and deep-fried entree.

Leaving aside the nutritional & ecological dimensions of sustainable fisheries and humane harvest of live natural resources, there are the many historical and cultural associations of the fish among followers of Jesus of Nazareth. For example, there is the phrase quoted in the Bible from Jesus that speaks of "making [his disciples] fishers of men." And there is a story of a meal for 5,000 men along with their women and children (loaves and fishes). Another story describes an ancient Christian code to identify fellow believers: it took the form of two curves in mirror image to resemble the head, body, and tail of a fish. Scenes like the stormy Sea of Galilee that Jesus commanded to become calm; the small businessmen who ran fish catches there who Jesus counted as some of his disciples; and the word-play of the ancient Greek word for fish, ICHTHYS, as an abbreviation for "I" + "CHristian" also can be attached to the fish. Finally, since according to tradition, Jesus was executed on Friday before sunset and the start of the weekly Jewish Sabbath, by serving fish on Friday instead of ordinary meat, the penitent follower is signaling a dim echo of the suffering that Jesus went through before and during his crucifixion. Dissertations and books probably discuss the meaning of fish for Christians at great length, but for now these scattered meanings give some of the sense of the context for "Fish on Fridays," as seen in this picture, above, from middle Michigan, USA on February 19, 2019.