Why eat the Pugliese cuisine?

It was time for dinner (which by the way means 8:30 PM), so I went to the dining room. And WOW -- there was a feast going on! There were raw meat and fish of all sorts, and I had to dare myself to try some of them because they were (to put it nicely) rather exotic. My curiosity kicked in, and I asked them, "What is this for?" They explained that eating raw (but not bloody) meat and fish on top of bread (a typical Pugliese cuisine) is a tradition on 7th of September. Apparently, this has been an Italian tradition for quite some time. I imagine that it is somewhat similar to how Americans eat turkey for thanksgiving.

Of course, then I asked them, "Pero perché ceniamo questo?" They said, "We don't know. We just eat this kind of food on this date every year."

So short answer: they don't know. They looked as clueless as I, and I found that very funny.

I attach a photo of a typical Pugliese dish that I found on Wikipedia. I know - it's quite rubbish of me for forgetting to take photos of amazing food. But I swear that this is not a food blog!