“It just doesn’t feel like a holiday without pasta,” my mother-in-law told us as she set a steaming bowl of tortellini onto the table in preparation for Christmas dinner. Now, I love pasta almost as much as an Italian. My husband, Eric, and I make it easily twice a week for dinner. But that statement struck me as odd at that moment. Newly married into the family, I didn’t quite know why it threw me off, as I had been at many of their celebrations over the years.
As I reflected, I realized my parents rarely had pasta at holiday dinners at our house growing up—unless you count the macaroni and cheese that graces most Black families’ tables at every get-together. We are a potato family. . . boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew. Every holiday we have potatoes. It just doesn’t feel like a holiday without potatoes.
This was a first of many moments in my married life when family traditions and expectations would brush up against each other. Neither way was right or wrong. We just celebrated holidays differently. Eric and I brought different expectations to our home about how to do Christmas (and Thanksgiving and Easter and Arbor Day). And part of forming our new family was figuring out what we would do to create our own traditions.
But deciding which food to serve was a lot easier than melding together other traditions. We had to figure out if we wanted to have Santa (yes!) and whether we should attend midnight Mass with toddlers (a resounding no!). We also had to balance which side of the family got which holidays and the nuances of family dynamics. There were positive and negative emotions around traditions that we each carried from childhood which required honest communication and compassion for each other. And, later, as our children were born, we had to adapt and learn again.
For example, Eric had always celebrated St. Nicholas Day with his family and wanted to continue the tradition of leaving treats in our kids’ shoes. I felt like it was just another thing to add to my busy plate during December. But I couldn’t help hearing the fondness in his voice as he spoke of waking up early to look for candy in his shoes and shared funny stories of his mom overfeeding everyone those nights at dinner. (She is Italian American, so this is a theme in most stories about my mother-in-law). I wanted our kids to share that important tradition from his family, even though it added to the mental load. So we figured out together what was important to pass on, who would be responsible for which traditions, and how we could make it our own.
As I reflect on those early years, I’m struck by how the experience formed me as a disciple as much as a wife. The traditions and rituals of Christmas took on new meaning, because I was choosing them as expressions of my adult faith which I wanted to share with others. I also got to learn about new ways to celebrate Christ’s birth from my husband, helping me see Jesus in a new way. And together, Eric and I created new traditions which affirmed the many ways God’s grace was actively shaping who we were becoming.
Our shared Christmas traditions have also become important tools for forming our children’s faith. The tactile, incarnational nature of practices like lighting an Advent wreath or decorating a Christmas tree involve their whole bodies in rituals which communicate truths about God. These practices require us as parents to teach not only how to do them, but why we do them. Through our traditions we create opportunities to explain what we believe about Jesus and how the symbols of the season represent our faith. Statements they have heard in religious education, youth ministry, or school Masses become grounded in the daily living within our home and our celebration of the season.
Taking a long view, the work of merging and adapting our family traditions was the work of creating a new domestic church. Each of us had our own cultural, religious, and personal contexts which enriched and challenged each other as we figured out what it meant to be one family united in love. This was one small piece of becoming a family, but it helped us practice the skills and virtues we would need throughout the many years of married life.
I often see echoes of our experience in the early church in the Acts of the Apostles. As the apostles preached and baptized after the resurrection, both Jews and Gentiles from many different cultures became part of the body of Christ. They didn’t have set ways to be Christian, because they were the first ones, so they had to figure out what they believed and how they would celebrate the grace of God together. Acts tells how the early Christian community was both anointed by the Holy Spirit and ripe with disagreements and discussions about what to eat, how to pray, and more. They needed communication, compassion, and humility to work together—and, of course, God’s own guidance and mercy through it all.
When I read about these courageous people who loved Jesus enough to keep praying, believing, and engaging with one another, I am encouraged for my own journey. We have two thousand years of witnesses who were seeking holiness as best they could in their own lives just as I am trying to do in my own life today.
Perhaps that is the lesson I will apply to my own discipleship, motherhood, and marriage this Christmas: The incarnation is the work of years. The grand story of salvation is ongoing even now, and my home is a locus where that story continues. Loving Jesus is a daily habit which must be incarnated in my life over many years. My family will be able to experience the goodness of God in their midst through my love for Jesus, the traditions I cultivate, and the love I show them.
My hope is that I will be this kind of disciple. I hope that in a decade or so, as my kids start to move into their own homes and their own vocations, they will have happy memories of Christmas and continue many of our traditions. I pray that they will have come to know Christ for themselves and experience his joy in the Christmas season. And I really hope that I’ll get to be there when they inevitably say, “It just doesn’t feel like a holiday without . . .”
This article also appears in the December 2025 issue of U.S. Catholic (Vol. 90, No. 12, page 43-44). Click here to subscribe to the magazine.
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