Everything Changes, But Christmas Lasagna Remains The Same

I'm Italian. Which means the first thing anyone asks when referring to a holiday celebration is, "So, you eat pasta?"

Well, yea, I kind of do, but more important than what we eat is spending time together. My family has specific, detailed traditions we have partaken in before I can remember. Even with a family rift that separated some family members and death that took others, or the addition of new people into the fold, our traditions have remained the same.

We attend Mass on Christmas Eve at St. Joseph's on Belair Rd., the church my younger sister, Kerry, and I were baptized in, and go out to dinner afterward -- the same restaurant since the days when Kerry and I wore matching Christmas dresses (We don't anymore, in case you were curious) -- Silver Spring Mining Company. In later years, we have broken tradition slightly and elected to start eating at Liberatore's. I suppose one night of pasta is just not enough.

Following dinner, my grandmother has a holiday party, and though the guest list has dwindled down year after year, some of us still arrive at her house, eat appetizers and watch the first showing of A Christmas Story until it is time to go home.

Christmas Day means my grandmother comes over to our place; we open gifts and make a new breakfast recipe (different every year) before relaxing at home until it is time to return to her house for the main event -- Christmas dinner, which is, of course, pasta. Lasagna to be exact (stuffed shells are Easter).

Christmas isn't the only time we eat lasagna, but for some reason it always tastes better on that day. Whether it's the faint cookie smell that still lingers in the air from the week-long cookie baking my grandmother has just completed, or the warmth in the house from all the people gathered in her first-floor condo, but the layers of thinly-sliced pasta, homemade marinara sauce and hand-crumbled ground beef taste better on the special Christmas china.

It may not seem like much, and as the years have passed the traditions have looked different, but they are what remind us it is Christmas. It is probably some sort of Italian stubbornness that no one wants to change anything, even as the traditions don't look like they used to. And as my sister and I get older they are bound to change even more to accommodate our new families and children. But for now, these traditions take us back to a time when we were young and life seemed perfect.

I will remember that as I eat my "Christmas lasagna" this year.