Italian recipes: how to make traditional pasta with tomatoes

I remember the tomato day fiascos when I was a child.
Any of my Italo-Australian friends had this great day where the family would all get together and make tomato sauce.
It sounded so culturally romantic and I could never understand what they complained about (although there is one funny story that my mother tells of an acquaintance’s family where the father never participated in tomato day and refused to buy his wife a blender.

The one year he decided to make tomato sauce himself, the food processor was an addition quickly made to the household).
Anyway, homemade tomato sauce tastes different, I swear it.
It comes from a southern Italian tradition of making tomato conserve to consume during winter months when tomatoes were out of season.