Christmas Cookies

The Christmas cookie baking started a couple of weeks ago. These are the last of the pumpkin spice white chocolate chip cookies. I forgot to take a picture of them before I made all the cookie gift boxes. These weren't planned cookies. I had some leftover pumpkin ( an entire story of its' own) and found this recipe. The cookies turned out really well, so I froze them for Christmas.

Before Mary arrived, I baked M&M /Toll House Cookies.

And then on Friday, Mary and I baked assorted blossom cookies and Hungarian Horns.

Christmas cookies are so much more than cookies. They are memories, and traditions, and a link with the past. I haven't baked Hungarian Horn cookies in at least 35 years. But as I was rolling the dough and forming the cookies, I was back in George and Harriet's kitchen figuring out the recipe for the first time at fourteen.

I had written a post the other day about trying hard to do Christmas, even though my heart is heavy. For a while on Friday, while baking cookies with Mary listening to Christmas music, my heart was lighter. Doing the things, keeping the traditions is important.

Because my Mom and Dad were in the kitchen on Friday, and always will be when I bake Christmas cookies. I am hoping that tomorrow, when A Christmas Story is playing on TV, I will feel Cecil's presence in the same way I felt my Mom and Dad.

And that is part of the magic of Christmas. The traditions are so intertwined with the people we share them with, that continuing with the traditions brings the people back, if only for a moment. But those moments are priceless, and they are so very wonderful.