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Cook Up a New Christmas COOKIE TRADITION this Year!
By Jessica Sylvester

For many of us, the holiday season comes with a very long to do list. Days of shopping for gifts, writing out Christmas cards or stringing up lights can deflate ones holiday spirit, but in our house something that always pumps us all back up is our family Christmas cookie tradition.

My husband, John, comes from a very large Italian clan that is passing their grandmothers Christmas cookie recipes and the tradition of making them together down through three generations. Even though Grandmom Smith has passed, her children, (all 11 of them!), grandchildren and great grandchildren all follow her special recipes to share and, most of all, enjoy during the holidays. Each family has a special edition of Mom’s Favorite Recipes created by John’s Uncle Mike that is filled with hand-written or typed recipes that Grandmom Smith created or gathered over the years. We all pick and choose what we want to try and recreate and sometimes we keep them for ourselves and other times, when gathered for a party, it is a nice surprise to see that someone has cracked open the recipe book and brought a special desert to share.

John has a collection of happy childhood memories centered around baking an array of cookies with his cousins and grandmother, and he happily puts on an apron to make new memories with our kids. He tells the kids tales of sneaking into his Grandmom’s downstairs freezer to swipe a bag of fresh baked cookies or of an all day baking session that ended with what he recalls as a “house full of cookies.” As far as the kids are concerned, it is the cookie that is the main attraction to flour-filled afternoons, but John and I know the time we are spending with the kids is the real treat.

As the holiday season approaches, our family discussions begin. We break out the cookbook, show one another the recipes, like we have never seen them before, and begin to negotiate which cookies will be on this year’s baking list. Jake, our 7 year old favors the chocolate ones, but Halle the 4 year old prefers something with icing and sprinkles. Lucky for them we always bake more than one batch of cookies and usually the combination makes everyone happy.

Our dinning room table is always full of holiday tins or boxes just waiting to be filled with treats and packaged up for family and friends. And yes, for mom it is usually cookies for breakfast for a day or so, but I take one for the team. With Christmas music playing and the kids conducting several taste tests our baking sessions can last awhile, but we do try to break things up so it stays fun. We mix one day and bake the next, but decorating is usually an ongoing process; there are just never too many sprinkles on a cookie. We usually end our season of baking on Christmas Eve when we bake or decorate a final batch, for Santa, of course. 

Even though I myself am from a fairly large family this tradition of baking together was not something we practiced and I, like many of those who have married into this family, find it to be an endearing and fun tradition to share with our own kids. And now with some cooking time under my belt, even my family and friends, who may have previously chuckled at the thought of me with a rolling pin, look forward to my little family baking sessions. I have even expanded our cookie list to include a few of my favorite cookies, but the ones that everyone seems to finish first are the ones from Grandmom’s cookbook.

Don’t get me wrong, baking together is not always easy, there have been several disasters, the kids, the kitchen and powdered sugar, need I say more? But on a whole, I think the batches that we have made have been, well, pretty good and we get better each time we try. This year we have a new addition to our little clan, Lea, our 1 year old will be in the mix licking her fingers and testing the icing for the very first time. What could be better than having fun and spending time together talking, laughing and baking. Happy Holidays!

Jessica Sylvester is a freelance writer.