Tradition

Today I noticed that retail stores have begun play­ing Christ­mas music. The older I get the more I real­ize per­haps the first of Novem­ber is a tad early to focus on Christ­mas, but regard­less, I love the hol­i­day. While strolling down the aisles and qui­etly singing along with a fine ren­di­tion of “Frosty The Snow­man”, I began think­ing of Christ­mas traditions.

One of the old­est mem­o­ries I have of Christ­mas is the Christ­mas Tree Cook­ies. My grand­mother would make “white cook­ies” and before bak­ing would take one of her many cookie cut­ters and cut bears, stars, trees and gin­ger­bread men from the cookie dough. Then toward the top of each cookie she would place a hole. After bak­ing, frost­ing, and sprink­ing those red and green sprinkly things on top (which tasted so good eaten straight from the sprinkly stuff con­tainer when no one was watch­ing), a string was inserted in the hole to sus­pend each indi­vid­ual cookie from one of the Chist­mas tree boughs. Over the course of the hol­i­day, each time I would visit, I would break off and eat an appendage from the gin­ger­bread man or bear shaped cook­ies. It wasn’t unusual to find a bear or a gin­ger­bread man with just its head dan­gling on the tree from its string.

I would love to have you post below your favorite hol­i­day mem­o­ries and traditions.