No matter what shows up on television or in the stores, Christmas, for me, begins the day ‘the girls’ soldier-up over wads of dough…Christmas cookie dough.
The skill! The talent! The sugar!
This year, the grands, ages 13, 16, and 19, owned it! Though they’d taken the reins for the past couple years, this year was a Mom’s furlough as they measured and mixed, tattooing their aprons with butter and sugar, flour and egg. Once the raw dough is dropped in waxed paper by the globs-full for a quick firm-up in the freezer, and the counter and table are lined with parchment paper, then comes the ranking task to choose your weapon…a rolling pin from among the 12 wooden pins I’ve collected over the years. It’s an analytical process.
Three wads of dough hit the roll-out surface, and pins and cookie cutters commenced to fly. Soon trays of cut-out shapes are ready for the oven. A warm scent swirls through the air.
The first batch of cookies are never survivors. Carefully shifting to the table for cooling, my youngest eyed the cookies, hands in her lap.
“Which one are you going to try?” I ask.
She perked. “I didn’t know if I could.” There was the time she wouldn’t have asked. Me neither.
“We have to be sure the cookies we share are alright. Right?”
She chose the exact cookie I would have—big and beautiful and delicately browned, the size of a palm.
If you’d known how this started so many years ago, all of us tripping over each other, those tiny hands so eager to roll and cut, propped up on stools, far more work than any cookie should be.
Making Christmas cookies turns to magic once the frosting and glitter, sprinkles and splatter hit the table…heavy on the sprinkles and splatter. Artistic flair dots the table at every chair. It’s a serious craft.
A holiday tradition can’t be ordered or commanded or mandated. Traditions must form organically from something everybody wants to do again and again. Those first years making Christmas cookies were a long time ago. My heart will always be wrapped in Christmas dough.
