A Tradition Continues

I just made about 150 cookies with my kids, my three nephews and a niece.

Making Christmas cookies with the kids is a joy my husband just doesn’t understand. Maybe because when he first walked into the kitchen in the middle of us cutting out the dough, the kids were fighting over the cutter shaped like the letter “E.” Thanks to a recent gift exchange, I now have almost 200 cookie cutters of all shapes and sizes. And everyone wanted the E?! Not the cute snowman. Not the jolly Santa. Not even the gingerbread man. The E??!!


I taught the kids a lesson in sharing as Bob left for a while. When he came back two hours later, we’d moved on to icing the cookies. There was icing scattered on the table, on the kids’ shirts, on the ceiling. Well, you get the picture.

“Let me know when you’re done,” he said as he walked out of the kitchen and waited in the living room until the mess was gone. When he tasted the finished product, I think he finally figured out the joy in the Christmas cookie process.

Making Christmas cookies has been special to me for a long time for a different reason. This was a Christmas tradition I shared with my grandma. Even when I left for college, she’d wait until I got back home so we could do this together. We’d laugh at our misshapen Santas (there were a lot of them), which had to be eaten hot out of the oven because they weren’t fit to be put out for Christmas. We’d smear the “wrong” color icing on the Christmas trees so those would have to be eaten too. Grandma would tell me of Christmas from years gone by and I’d tell her about what was going on in my life.

I no longer have my Grandma to make cookies with me. But I have her cookie cutters and I have fourteen hands helping to cut out misshapen Santas and to smear pink icing on trees. And it’s good.