Mom Confessions: I hate Christmas cookies

Okay, that’s not true.   I LOVE to eat Christmas cookies.  I HATE baking them.  And that’s not really even true.  I just don’t fully enjoy baking Christmas cookies with my girlies.  And, cue the guilt trip for saying it out loud! 

Baking is one of my favorite things.  I love thinking of a reason to bake something and creating a celebration around it.  “Hey, I made a chocolate tart. Why?  To celebrate Tuesday, of course!”  I especially love baking for other people.  We don’t keep a lot of treats around here, so I don’t usually bake unless I came craft a really good reason, and when I do, I like to go ALL out!






And then there’s Christmas baking.  The tradition in my home, my husband’s home and many American homes is to bake as many types of cookies as you can, store them up so you have a variety to offer to Santa and then what? Eat them ALL??  The kind I treasure the most are spritz cookies (tastes yummy, super easy) but I don’t have the cookie press, so we pass on those.  I make, and enjoy modifying my grandmother’s fudge, and then we make cut-outs.



Let me explain. Baking is relaxing to me.  I enjoy creating something from scratch, making it not only tasty, but also beautiful and presenting it in a lovely way.

You know who likes to make cut-out cookies?  Children.  Messy, adorable children who haven’t a care in the world about what happens to all the flour on the ground when the activity is over.  Children find it so joyful to use those perfect cutters and turn a flat slab of cookie dough into a Christmas tree, a magical snowman, a tasty candy cane. 





I want to enjoy baking with my girls, I do, and I make a valiant effort, but in the end, it ends up making me quite cranky.  I’d rather decorate the cookies without them, but little girls in their Christmas aprons fight over their chance to use the cutters.  And so we do. I bite my tongue and swallow the tension as they dump flour all over the floor, I’m even proud at the not quite perfect candy canes they cut out and can’t wait to see the piles of sugar they use to decorate their creations.  I don’t enjoy each moment but always enjoy the experience overall because I know that someone must have let me make a mess and create imperfect baking masterpieces.  How else did I fall in love with it in the first place?

And for the times when it makes me feel just crazy?  Well, that’s why there’s wine!

And, in the end, their creations are just so adorable, that I know I’ll happily dive right in the next time.