It's time to bake the cookies

It’s a week before Christmas and all through the house, focus and presents are scattered about… nothing is hung by the chimney with care, and according to the calendar St. Nicholas will soon be here…

And so, even though I have too many things to do, I’ve been wondering about traditions. By definition, a tradition is the passing down of elements of a culture from generation to generation… A mode of thought or behavior followed by a people continuously from generation to generation; a custom or usage… A time-honored practice or set of practices.

Okay. We have time honored practices. We have passing down elements of culture from generation to generation. We have traditions.

Yesterday, when I mentioned to my son that I wanted the family to go out and pick a Christmas tree, he informed me he had plans to be out of town this weekend with his friends. “Besides, Mom, I just stand there until you decide which tree we bring home. You don’t need me.” Okay, we’ve never traipsed out to the woods to cut one down like some holiday ideal we see advertised. We live near a large metropolitan area. We go to the nearest corner lot that’s sprouted pine trees and pick one. It’s our tradition. And, this tradition requires that we do it together. Except maybe this year, because it seems that my young adults are creating traditions of their own. Okay, things evolve.

So, what is my tradition? Maybe my scramble to do last minute shopping and the walking in circles dazed and confused is as much a part of my tradition as anything.

Food is associated with most holidays. It is one of the elements of culture handed from generation to generation. Like Thanksgiving when a lot of us are comforted by knowing that the green bean casserole will most likely make an appearance next to the cranberry sauce because it is tradition, in my house it is expected that I will bake Christmas cookies.

I usually crank out Toll House cookies, Peanut Butter Supremes with Hershey’s Kisses blossoming in the center, along with raspberry jam Thumbprints and chocolate and coconut macaroon bars. There might even be an Italian pine nut macaroon that rivals those remembered from the corner bakery in northern New Jersey frequented by my Grandmother, aunts, and even my Uncle Al. That said, what everyone in my house waits for is my famous almond butter pretzel cookie.

It’s just not Christmas until I bake the pretzel cookies.

The pretzel cookie is a two day event, a confection requiring timing, utmost control and patience. A cookie that many have tried, most have failed and somehow, in my family only I have mastered. I tore the recipe out of one of my mother’s Family Circle magazines in 1981. The almost-thirty-year-old stained, torn, very used pages are now preserved in plastic binder sheets in my recipe organizer. I’ve consulted these pages and baked this cookie routinely -- through my single days, my newlywed years, even through my kid's baby years -- never missing one.

I’ve thought about giving up this tradition. Who needs the calories, the cholesterol, the sugar, or the gluten anyway?  Maybe I could skip it. No more crazy-lady baking. I thought about how it all came to be, this being my tradition. My mother never baked cookies. Once we were old enough, the cookie baking was left to her three daughters. Hmmmm…  Three daughters, baking cookies… you get the picture.

Thoughts of cookie retirement danced in my head. Is it time to hand over this tradition to my own daughter just home from school?

I was excited until I remembered that sometime over this past summer my father had handed me the festively decorated cookie tin that I gave him last year. He had said he hoped he got it back filled again this year.

The pretzels are one of his favorites.

I don’t have a prayer.

It’s time to bake the cookies.

Sooo… hear me exclaim as I sign off tonight…

“Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.”

(and, Peace to all you bakers out there.)