First Draft

The kitchen is covered in flour and strips of cookie dough – fresh cookie dough, made from scratch, from the hands of the Ragonesi girls, though I suppose my mother is not technically a Ragonesi any longer. She wears a striped apron, and her coarse blonde hair is pulled into a ponytail, wispy hairs poking out around her tan face. 

I hear her voice sing a soprano, as she snaps her fingers and wiggles her slender hips – not childbearing wide hips like my father’s side of the family. Mariah Carey’s Christmas album booms loudly, as my sister prepares the chocolate chip cookie dough, her speciality, and I start on the raspberry oatmeal square bars. The easy option, for I’m hardly a cook, hardly a baker. 

I stir yellow cake mix with eggs and dry oatmeal, and smoosh the cakey powder into the bottom of a glass pan. Pouring strawberry jam next, then topping with the remainder of oatmeal mixture, I remember that I never save enough to completely cover the top. The jam is always spewing out. But that is okay. 

My mother kneads the dough for the sugar cookies, and after my sister slips the chocolate chip cookies into the oven, the three of us grab cookie cutters and start making Christmas shapes like stars and trees and the infamous reindeer whose baked product always results in crispy antlers that will inevitably break apart. 

But that is okay. 

Why is it okay? Because I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is tradition. Our tradition. One of many I remember from childhood that we transfer into adulthood. No matter the place any of us call home, we find a kitchen, make a floury mess, burn cookies, and sing Mariah Carey. 

I was raised Protestant, never understanding the importance of Catholic traditions and routines. Why so much to memorize? Why the chanting and kneeling and repetition? Well, because it is tradition. And traditions are sacred. 

I attended an early morning mass this morning where the rosary prayers were chanted by the priest, my friend who sat next to me, and the other small handful of attendees welcoming God’s presence before sunrise. This was not the church I was raised in. These are not my traditions. 

Throughout my life, I was thankful to be a Protestant as opposed to being Catholic, for I did not see the point in the rituals. They seemed archaic, running through the motions instead of taking to heart the messages. But as I walked up for communion – a tradition I am not privy to because I am not Catholic – I crossed my arms and was blessed by the priest, and when I returned to my pew, I felt at ease. At ease and full of peace, but also full of regret for not being able to partake in a beautiful tradition such as this. 

In Protestant churches, members sip smalls cups of grape juice and eat a tiny wafer. I always accepted. There was no rule for not being able to join in. Perhaps I needed to be baptized first, but the Protestant church is and was quite lenient, and even allowed an eight year old child such as myself to sip on the yummy grape juice, though I knew little of its significance. 

I wished I understood more back then. But perhaps that is okay. That was my tradition. Attending Christian rock band worship before a minister would flail around stage, preaching scripture amidst his own monologues. Different every visit, different within every Protestant church around the world, for there is no consistency or ritual in the Protestant church. 

The Catholic masses are the same across the world. Whether one is inside a New Orleans church, or an Italian chapel in Rome, the message is the same. The scriptures recited are the same. The rituals, the tradition, is the same. 

I think about Christmas again, and how I’ve been to many candlelit Christmas Eve services in my life, but how attendance was not necessarily a tradition. Just like the Nutcracker at Cincinnati’s Music Hall, or A Christmas Carol at Playhouse in the Park, these are lenient traditions that were not always but rather merely sometimes. But that is okay. Perhaps the nature of sometimes is a tradition of the Ragonesi’s. 

I still wished I were Catholic rather than Protestant, and I suppose I am capable of making such a conversion. However, Catholicism is not my tradition. Though I am learning the importance of tradition by familiarizing myself with the Catholic Church. I am Protestant. I am a Ragonesi girl. I make cookies with my family and sing Mariah Carey. I sip grape juice and eat wafers at church, sometimes, and I now cross my arms before the priest when attending mass. 

Traditions are important. Rituals remind us of their importance. 

I am not Catholic. But that is okay. 

I am a traditionalist, and that is okay.