Fall and winter months were always
a confusing time in my family. It’s the
time of year when extended families are expected to get together, whether they
want to or not, to celebrate the holidays; the men sit down to watch sports,
and the women gather to prepare food in the kitchen. At least, that’s how I’ve always figured it’s
supposed to go. I never had the
experience to determine whether this was true or not. My extended family, scattered throughout
Seattle, Portland, Cleveland, Tallahassee, Mexico City, and we in Philadelphia,
never had an easy time congregating.
Seattle was the base, as my parents’ families of origin both began
there. But frequent holiday visits were
not always possible. My family visited
most years in July or August, when Seattle was experiencing its best
weather—that is, when Seattle is least like Seattle. We went out for Christmas when I was four,
and again when I was thirteen, but to date that has left twenty-one other
Christmases to be spoken for—not to mention twenty-three Thanksgiving Days.
We
really never had a traditional celebration.
Several times we went to Cleveland to spend Thanksgiving or Christmas
with my mom’s brother and his wife and two daughters, and several times they
came to us. This was my favorite way to
spend those holidays, but some years they had other plans. And once their first daughter left the house,
there wasn’t any hope of congregating with our Cleveland family. A fair number of times we got together with
some nearby friends who had a similar familial situation. But eventually, that tradition fell by the
wayside, as I looked for other places to go.
Since we didn’t have holiday plans that had solidified by repetition and
obligation, my family had room for other traditions.
The year I was
born, my mom discovered a recipe in Parents
magazine for cutout butter cookies. At
some point along the lines, before my memory started to record events, Mom
began decorating them in colored frosting.
I don’t know when and how Mom discovered that I liked these cookies, but
somehow she realized—I liked
them. By the time I was old enough to
understand the concept of decorating cookies, she had already collected an
assortment of cookie cutters—dogs, cats, Santa’s sleigh, turkeys, pumpkins,
bells, acorns—and food coloring in any number of hues—forest green, Kelly
green, lime green, rustic red, red-orange….
Come Halloween, Mom would pull out her recipe for the cutout cookies;
after a while though, a recipe was unnecessary.
Several times over the next two months, Mom would spend the morning
making and baking these cookies. As I
learned in later years, it was not so simple a procedure as it looked. The end product, though, justified the labor
pains. Not only were they darling to
look at, but they were delicious. I
don’t think I’ve tasted anything that so thoroughly satisfied my taste buds. Every combination of flavors you craved was
in these cookies. They filled your mouth
with a not-too-sweet-but-sweet-enough buttery flavor. The butter, sugar, vanilla, dash of salt,
smooth frosting…. All of it congregated ever so pleasingly there in your mouth,
the way most families congregated, probably at the moment I was enjoying the
cookies, although the cookie I’m sure was far more satisfying. It left you perfectly happy, as though
nothing else could have brought you such fulfillment.
A couple batches
for Halloween, a couple for Thanksgiving, a couple for Christmas; sometimes
more. This was typical. Once a fresh set of cookies had cooled down
after baking in the oven, I would help Mom frost them. I can’t imagine how atrocious mine must have
looked in my early years of practice. I
always admired Mom’s ability to make a perfectly rounded edge of frosting, just
shy of the edge of the cookie. And she
always had an eye for placing sprinkles, simply and perfectly, atop the
cookies. The way she decorated her
cookies fully reflected her being. They
were careful and intentional.
Mom made these
cookies frequently for many autumns and winters. She rarely brought others into the process of
baking—the laborious part. In my young
years I often meandered in the kitchen when she made them. I would play with the flour before she put it
into the dough. I would sift it into a
tall mountain, though sifting wasn’t really necessary. I suppose it gave me something productive to
do and kept me out of her way. The baking was the painstaking part, so she most
often did that on her own and invited friends and family, when they were
around, into the decorating.
We have countless
home videos with friends and family frosting cookies and dropping sprinkles
over them. We held an entire party one
winter day of six-year-old girls decorating cookies. One year we brought the naked cookies to
Cleveland with us, along with the decorating supplies, and the entire family
went to town decorating. Many memorable
times were had with this activity, and every time we make them we reflect on
creative things people have done with their decorations. A friend once made a crack in a bell-shaped
cookie that looked identical to that in the Liberty Bell. Another friend once turned an acorn into the
face of an Asian man wearing a hat.
There were endless creative possibilities in the decorating of these
cookies, and the best were always rewarded by being reflected upon every time
we made the cookies.
When Mom started
working again, batches of the cookies we decorated each year became scarce. We’re lucky now if one batch comes out of the
oven each year. Simply missing the delectable
flavor, I recently took over the baking process, and understood why we make so
few anymore. But despite how difficult
they may be, it is a tradition that simply can no longer be forgotten. They are most often now an autumn tradition,
since that was when the process usually began.
October was the beginning of the cookie decorating season. Now the “season” has become more like a day
long, but if an October goes by without baking and decorating cookies, it will
surely happen in November—or December.
