Christmas Cookies

I finally got around to baking Christmas cookies yesterday. There were any number of other things that were also on my "must do" list, but the cookies catapulted to the top. One must have one's priorities. What's the big deal about cookies, you ask? Oh, simply that, without them, it wouldn't be Christmas.

Well, okay - of course it would be Christmas, but it wouldn't feel right. Cookies are among the half a dozen or so Christmas essentials (the others being a Christmas tree of some kind, music, candles, and presents of sorts - homemade or no-cost are just as good as money-spending ones). Christmas celebrations are all about traditions, connecting with the past. So my cookies, they have history. Well, not the individual ones, of course, but the kinds of cookies I make. They're the kind my mother made, and my grandmother, and her mother, and her mother... I have some special carved cookie moulds that are over a hundred years old; they used to belong to my great-grandfather's sister-in-law. Among my cookie cutters are ones that have been in a family since at least my mother; I remember using them as a child. One of the favourites was always the little choo-choo train with coal tender and cars; we used to argue about who got to use it first. And then I added to the collection, myself - there's a little donkey cookie cutter I bought at the Christmas market in Stuttgart five years ago, and one that's a car, sort of like a new beetle, which tells you right there it's not an antique.

The thing about these recipes is that they're very specifically Christmas cookies; never, at any other time of the year, would you make these cookies. The recipes were developed to use the most special, rare ingredients - literally 'rich' recipes, because you couldn't afford them any other time. They're loaded with butter, sugar, white flour (as opposed to the coarse whole-grain flour you'd bake your bread from year-round), eggs, almonds - all foodstuffs that were carefully rationed, in the days when there was some connection between the difficulty of producing a food and its cost. (Take butter, for example: it takes about a quart of cream to make less than a pound of butter; and a lot of milk to get a quart of cream. So a recipe that calls for half a pound of butter - well, that takes huge amounts of milk to get there.) And the spices that go into Christmas cookies are almost all exotics, as far as Europeans are concerned. Vanilla, lemon and orange peel, cinnamon, cloves, allspice, star anise -   from India, China, the Spice Islands, rare and costly.

Today, all these foods are commonplace, and cheap. I eat butter every day, and white flour and sugar are so ubiquitous in our diet that it takes an effort to avoid them. As for the "exotic" spices, they tend to be cheaper and easier to get a hold of than anything that might be grown locally. But the cookies are still special, even today. Because what is rare and in short supply today is time - the sheer amount of time and effort that goes into making these things. Cutting cookies from a sheet of rolled dough takes much longer than dishing out the dough by the spoonful onto a cookie sheet, and normally, during the course of the year, I would never stand at the counter carefully brushing icing onto five dozen cinnamon stars - it takes far too long. But for Christmas, it's worth it. And the labour of making the cookies becomes part of the tradition. I have very fond memories of cookie making as a child, and my own kids now carry on in the same vein. And that's what it's all about, isn't it?

Life, the Universe, and Christmas Cookies. Come on over for a visit, we're happy to share!

On Christmas Trees and Nose Bags

It's Christmas Eve, which for us Germans means we have the big celebration tonight. Our Christmas customs are a blend between the German and Canadian styles. We do our present-opening on Christmas Eve, but on Christmas Day we have stockings and a big turkey dinner. And we have an Advent Wreath and light the candles on the Advent Sundays, but the Christmas tree gets put up about a week before Christmas, not secretly the day of Christmas Eve. It would be difficult to do that German-style anyway with the open floor plans we have hereabouts; you can't lock the kids out of the living room for secrecy when there's no door to lock.

Our Christmas tree came from the woods behind our house - that's another Canadian thing to do, to just get a free Christmas tree permit from the forestry department (nowadays you can just download it from the web), and go into the woods to find your own. You just have to make sure you carry that permit in your pocket, else if a Department of Forestries Official catches you, he might drag you off to the nearest lock-up and imprison you over the holidays on suspicion of trying to set up trade in Charlie Brown trees. They're coveted commodities, those trees, but residents are allowed three per household - with a permit, of course. Forestry officials are combing the Canadian woods in large numbers at this season, looking for Christmas Tree Perpetrators. You probably thought those roadblocks where the RCMP pulls you over and asks how many glasses of mulled wine you had are meant to prevent drunk driving, but in fact, they're a cover for checking for unauthorized Christmas-Tree-Transporting. RCMP and Department of Forestries are working together to prevent Dastardly Tree Crimes at this season.

Yesterday I turned on the TV, and it just so happened that my favourite Christmas movie was on. In fact, I'd already considered putting in the video I'd taped a couple of years ago to watch it (yes, I still have a VHS player. Antiquated, I know, but I'm unrepentant). But I didn't have to; they faithfully aired (cabled?) "A Child's Christmas in Wales", as they have done every Christmas the last few years. This is the version with Denholm Elliott playing the grandfather, telling his grandson of the snowy Christmasses he had when he was young ("I can never remember whether it snowed for six days and six nights when I was twelve or whether it snowed for twelve days and twelve nights when I was six."). If you get a chance to watch it, do; it's well worth it. But if you can't get a hold of it, here is my latest discovery: Dylan Thomas himself reading his poem/story, in measured, epic tones. Denholm Elliott does it more lyrical, lilting; but you can't beat hearing it in the poet's own voice. "There were the Useful Presents: engulfing mufflers of the old coach days, and mittens made for giant sloths; ... and books that told me everything about the wasp, except why." I think I had better go and crochet a little nose bag for one of my children, we don't have any aunts, whinnying or not, coming to visit this year to supply the want.

Life, the Universe, and Christmas Cheer. May yours be blessed and merry.