Christmas Stories: Family's Tradition of Christmas Cookie Bake Holds Strong

I put on my Christmas apron and wrap the top of the kitchen table with foil, securing the edges with tape. Voila! I am now the Maestro of the family's annual Christmas cookie bake! All the ingredients for my sister's special sugar cookies are put into the over-sized clay bowl. The cookie dough is mixed with great joy and vigor.

Cookie shapes are coaxed from the far reaches of my kitchen cabinets and displayed for those brave enough to cut the thinly rolled out dough. Ever so delicately, the cut shapes are deposited onto the baking sheets. There is anticipation of the aroma of freshly baked cookies in the air!

Out of the oven the Cookie Maestro extracts the slightly browned batches of stars, bells, gingerbread men, sleighs, Christmas trees, and wreaths. They are deposited on the foiled table. The kitchen is crowded with family, friends, and perhaps some neighbors. Each cookie elf now begins to decorate his or her cookies.

Who can make the most beautiful cookie? Who can make the funniest one? Who can make the ugliest one? Who can load a cookie with the most decorations? The centerpiece of the foil-wrapped table is composed of glaze, tubes of red and green icing with four different tips, sprinkles in all colors including chocolate, nuts, raisins, and miniature marshmallows. There is everything a cookie-decorating elf could ever hope for!

The recipe becomes more precious with each passing year. It was my sister's recipe, so after she died of cancer, the recipe is used to make cookies in her memory. After the head of our family, Gaylon, died suddenly and tragically while stationed overseas in Germany, we make cookies in memory of both loved ones gone to heaven.

When Christmas came after the attacks on 9/11, our family donates a very large box of cookies to our local fire and police departments. We share the cookies with mail deliverers, neighbors, Sunday School members, and other appreciative recipients. After April Renee, my elder of two daughters, who was eight months pregnant was murdered, our little family made the cookies in memory of her and her little girl.

We always make special cookies at the end of the dough-the first initial of our names. When all my family was alive, the initials spelled out "GLAD", the essence of the Christmas tidings. Only the person with that initial is allowed to eat his or her special initial cookie each year.

After twenty years as a widow, I see God's handiwork in our Christmas cookie bake. I have a three year-old grandson named Andrew, and now there is magically a godly man in my life named Gene. The special initial cookies this year will once again spell "GLAD".

Someday when all those we have loved are gathered in heaven, perhaps we will make cookies at Christmas time again. We can even bake special initial cookies for all the angelic host and the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost; and "GLAD" will not even come close to our sentiments for such a grand cookie bake!