Christmas Cookie Day

One of our fun family traditions during the holidays is – Christmas Cookie Day.  In this day and age of “fast food”, eating out, ready to bake pizza and store bought cookies, it is so nice to take a break from our modern microwave paced world and do things the “old fashion” way.

My love for Christmas baking goes back to my own family where we would all pitch in together to make lots of goodies during the Christmas season.  My personal specialties were lemon meringue pies and snickerdoodles with red and green sprinkles.  We all chipped in on Christmas cookie day – rolling the dough, cutting the cookies and of course decorating!  Although my warmest memories are of my dear Dad and his decorating expertise.  My Dad was a Naval officer and during one of his times of separation from us his family, he took cake decorating classes!  This not only resulted in AMAZING and beautiful cakes throughout my entire childhood but he also decorated wonderful Christmas cookies and my personal favorite the tops of chocolate mints.  Each mint would be finely decorated with a wreath, stocking, candle, holly & ivy or other icons of Christmas. They were exquisite! (almost too beautiful to eat but we did!)

I lost my father 12 years ago and I think of him often and during these special traditions my heart is flooded with love, warmth and joy as I remember our times together.  This is one of the beauties of creating traditions with your family – you give them life long memories that will be with them to comfort and cheer them always. 

Thus I have continued the Christmas cookie tradition in my own family. In case you are thinking – “Ahhh!  How does she pull that off in the midst of everything?”  Well…let me tell you – it’s easy.  You just put it on the calendar as an “event” that can’t get changed.   When I pull out a new calendar and plan the year, I put on all the important family traditions that need to happen.  So “Christmas Cookie Day” has been in bold red and green letters on the calendar for over a year.  When other things try to crowd out these important activities, we simply say – “sorry we have plans that day” – because we do! (Calendar scheduling is one of the keys to living a purposeful life!)

Yesterday, December 8th was Christmas Cookie Day at the Lambdin home.  We had another great day of making, baking and decorating cookies!  Our classic cookies are:

• Sugar Cookies
• Gingerbread Cookies
• Snickerdoodles with red & green sprinkles
• Russian Tea Cakes
• Chocolate Crinkles

We have a perfectly lazy day – often not getting out of our p.j.’s, letting the dishes pile up, the floor collect tiny red candies and flour cover everything.  We play Christmas music, chatter away and laugh often. We eat way too many samples! We have a great day together and it the end of it all we have a freezer full of cookies to be used at our many holiday celebrations and to bless others. The first tray will go out today with Amy who is going to play with the children who are homeless and at the Gospel Rescue Mission.