Christmas cookie nostalgia
What is it about making Christmas cookies that brings on the nostalgia?
I spent yesterday afternoon making sugar cookies with a longtime friend and her 13-year old daughter. From the handwritten recipe card handed down from her maternal grandmother to the thoughtfully collected mixing bowls, red and green cookie cutters and platters, and snowflake-handled frosting spreaders — this is a space we return to year after year.
When I walked into the dining room, I was immediately assigned to frosting duty — mixing the green and red food coloring into the bowls of butter and sugar and trying my best to get the colors to move beyond light mint and pink. I was a bit relieved because I really suck at rolling out the dough. I can never seem to find the sweet spot between not enough flour vs. too much.
In the course of mixing frosting, rolling out sticky dough and trying to save a misshapen star missing a fifth point or a curved Christmas tree that looked like it would have been perfectly at home in the Grinch’s Whoville, we debated the merits of thin vs thick cookies. It was a contest between crispy/crunchy and brown on the edges vs. doughy and with a depth your teeth can sink into. Of course this debate occurred in anticipation of the actual eating, while we were waiting for that first batch — the tasting batch — to come out of the oven.
We had the bowls of white, green, and red frosting set out before us, ready to be put to use. The two dogs were underfoot trying to get some of the sugary crumbs that occasionally fell to the floor, Christmas music was playing, and I had a perfect view of the well-lit tree filled with an eclectic assortment of ornaments collected over the decades, several of which had been my own contributions. We’ve been friends since 1985 so we’ve had many gifting opportunities. In fact, I know this sugar cookie recipe and she knows mine. Her grandmother’s recipe has sour cream. My grandmother’s has nutmeg and sour milk. (Perhaps a French-Canadian vs Irish-American difference?)
Once the first couple of batches of cookies had cooled enough to frost them, I took to the task with an assembly-line approach like the well-trained, raised-by-a-GM-night-shift-worker daughter that I am! I gravitated to the bows and frosted one after another with a sort of methodical and meditative approach. It was just so nice to be indoors and without a mask. Decorating the miniature trees, stockings, mittens, and bows felt really normal and, though not terribly exciting, was a welcome retreat. We’ve had more than a lifetime’s excitement in the last two years.
Christmas is different this year but I’m just grateful to be able to celebrate it with friends. I guess that’s what nostalgia looks like in 2021.
