I am a girl who loves dim sum. But what was once mere culinary whimsy has morphed into something of a religious thing. Now the holiest day of the year is upon me: December 25th, known to some as Christmas, of course, but to me it’s Dim Sum Day.

It began in grad school – with reluctance – when a friend called to invite me for “Dim Sum Christmas with Jews.”

“I don’t know. Maybe,” I said. While I’m third-generation Brooklyn Jew, well versed in steeplechase history and the old stoopball rules, to me the closest I come to feeling religion is communing with a great book, walking the span of a stunningly built bridge, or being graced by any small thing lovingly made. Dim Sum Christmas with Jews – was I even Jewish enough to do such a thing?

“Ten o’clock,” she said. “In that mall under the Manhattan Bridge.”

“Ten o’clock! And there isn’t even a mall under the Manhattan Bridge!”

While my family had developed a Christmas Eve tradition of eating First Wok take-out up at my parents’ apartment while switching between ballet and Hitler footage on cable TV, I preferred to spend the actual day of Christmas in bed. But I was in grad school here in the city, in a basement apartment with a perpetually empty fridge. “Okay, dim sum,” I said. “I’ll be there.”

I set the alarm – and I went.

That morning, leaving my Chelsea apartment, the streets were Christmas quiet, the storefronts closed, the pavement impossibly open and gray.

But emerging at Canal Street, everything was bustle-as-usual, the sidewalks a jumble with impromptu commerce and pedestrians bundled up against the cold. There was, in fact, a mall on East Broadway under the Manhattan Bridge. It was without Banana Republic or Borders or Gap. On the ground floor were wooden barrels of roots and what appeared to be phone cards in glass displays, but ride up the escalator and suddenly you’re in dim sum Promised Land.

The Triple 8 Palace banquet hall is sprawling, the walls frenetically decorated, the carpets red, the support beams done in mirrored tile. The place was packed – with Jews and Chinese alike, in tables of 10, tables of four, each contributing laughter and chatter to the dining-hall din.

We were seated at a corner table – a motley crew of near strangers, friends of friends of friends, reminding me of Thanksgiving dinners in college – the odd assemblage of students far from home with nowhere else to go. We were writers and doctors, students and temps calling out introductions across our Lazy Susan puddled with tea. And it all seemed like chaos – a miserable way to spend a morning – until the steam-table traffic rolled its way in our direction and we were offered up the goods. We chose dumplings from carts stacked high with bamboo steamers, shumai stacked in stainless steel. There were carts arranged with tiny bowls of puddings and egg custards. There were sweet cream buns and red bean buns, bundles of steamed white dough marked with a spot of color.

We ate for what seemed like hours, steamers and steamers presented and taken away. The chivalrous among us revealed themselves, waiting for the second round as various dumplings were served up in threes or fours or fives.

But what did any of this mean? Why, at the age of 26, sharing this cacophonous feed with virtual strangers, did I finally feel I’d found a holiday tradition I’d like to hold on to? A quick Google search reveals the following translations of the term dim sum: “from the heart,” “a little bit of heart,” “to touch the heart” – and maybe that’s what won me; amid the raucous shopping season, here was the heartbreaking offering of something small and perfect and shared, each dumpling hand-crimped at its edge, each peek of pink shrimp through its rice wrapper like witnessing something aglow inside.

Lest you think me saccharine: We passed on the chicken feet. We passed on the tripe.

We walked off the food coma on the Brooklyn Bridge, the holiest structure I know. We would do this, we swore, every year forever, we 10 strangers would eat dim sum on Christmas again and again. And for three years running, we did.

And then it was Dim Sum Day 2001, and instead of spending the day at the Palace, I was in Virginia with my boyfriend’s family, gathered around an extremely large ham. It was the logical choice – the boyfriend’s family had five kids and a full roster of traditional traditions, into which I’d been most warmly invited. But after sitting on the Christmas sidelines all my life, I was unsure of participating in this holiday whose national status seems to simply transgress our guarantee for separate church and state.

The house was big, skirted by a porch, lovingly wrapped with garlands and lights. This was Northern Virginia, but rural – horse country. “There’s our one restaurant,” Kyle pointed out as we pulled into town. The sign didn’t say Dim Sum; it said simply Restaurant, and then, smaller: Best in Food.

His parents were welcoming, encouraging me to share any holiday traditions my own family might have, but I stood there in the evergreen-smelling splendor, and I couldn’t think of a thing. His mother showed me the window-seat spread with cotton bunting, onto which, each year, she set out the statuettes of a small winter struck town. She walked laps with me around the tree and gave the ornament history. She saved her favorite for last, the advent calendar hanging by the kitchen door. All but one of its cardboard windows were swung open, the 25th just one big window away. And standing there in all that warmth and Christmas and family, all I could think of were the wooden cabinets in my parents’ kitchen and how no matter which one you open you’ll invariably find the plastic packets of First Wok duck sauce that will never ever be used or thrown out but are haphazardly saved. Right now, that minute, that Christmas Eve, there was probably a whole new round of them being delivered to our door.

The next day, I woke up early, drove for an hour to D.C., ordered veggie dumplings to go and ate them as I drove, arriving back at the house before anyone even knew I had gone.

For reasons unrelated to dim sum, Christmas, or my family’s reluctance to part with duck sauce, that relationship came to an end. And when The Season finally came around again, there I was, right back at dim sum with friends.

In the intervening years we’ve expanded our range – to HSF and the Golden Unicorn. But this Dim Sum Day I know exactly where I’ll be – in the Gap-less Mall under the Manhattan Bridge with friends, watching the dim sum come around at the Triple 8, nodding my head and smiling as the noodles and shumai and red bean buns rolling by, all the riches of our country before me, saying: Yes, yes please.

Ms. Feitell’s first book, “Here Beneath Low-Flying Planes,” won the 2004 Iowa Prize for Short Fiction.