Well, the Christmas Cookies started creeping into my brain yesterday. It happens every year, those cookies. Ever since I started celebrating Christmas when I was 18, I've had a mad affair with them. You see, I spent a lot of years in my childhood seeing *other* kids eat those beautiful Christmas cookies, but not being allowed to have any myself.
I started out my life with the usual holiday excitement in December: a lighted tree, trips to see Santa, special cookies and treats and cards on the wall, and presents on Christmas. When I was five years old (old enough to notice), my mother changed religions and we no longer celebrated Christmas at all. The month of December, when my friends, neighbors and schoolmates were excitedly talking about Christmas, became a month of confusion for me as a small child. Christmas was now "wrong" and "bad," and I was forbidden to partake in the seasonal traditions in any way. Back in the day, they even used to have Christmas at school. There were decorations everywhere. I'd go to art class and be given a project of coloring a picture of Santa and gluing cotton balls on his beard, and I'd say, "I'm not allowed to do that." I'd be singled out with an alternate project (snowman) and have to field questions about why I was different. I'd go to music class and stand silently as the other children sang "We wish you a Merry Christmas" and "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." I got kicked out of orchestra because I wouldn't play Christmas carols in the concert. But the worst part every year in Elementary School was the class Christmas party. I dreaded it as much when I was 10 as I did when I was 5 years old.
It would start in early December, with the teacher instructing everyone to write their names down on a slip of paper and put them into a fishbowl. Then each child would draw a name for the present exchange that would happen during the class Christmas party.
I hated it. I hated sitting there not putting my name in the bowl, and standing there not taking a name FROM the bowl. All the kids thought I was strange, or selfish, or poor, or stupid. It sucked. They'd all stand around chattering excitedly about what they were going to get for each other, who got whom in the draw, and which kind of cookies their mother was bringing to the party. And I stood in the back, alone.
All month long, Christmas treats would pop up. In the cafeteria, they'd hand out frosted Christmas sugar cookies, and I'd go through the line and shake my head and say "no thank you." Teachers would hand out candy canes or small treats and I'd say "no thank you." And then the culmination of my discomfort: the class Christmas party.
Instead of just keeping me home that day or offering to come and pick me up early, my mother insisted I go to school and "learn to stand by my faith and be an example of what is right" (a heavy burden for a 5 or 6 year old). And so every year, I was there when we were sitting in class doing our math and suddenly "Santa" would burst into the classroom with a "Ho Ho Ho!" and all the children would jump up squealing with delight. He'd open his bag and start handing out goodies... mothers would enter the classroom with plates of cookies and cupcakes... and kids would break out their brightly wrapped gifts to exchange with each other. And I would sit in the hall.
As soon as Santa entered, I'd be ushered out to the stark hallway to sit on a hard chair for an hour while the parties went on. I could hear the laughter. I could smell the frosting. Kids would walk past me in the hallway and wonder what kind of trouble I was in that I was excluded from the Christmas party. They'd laugh at me. They'd say "wow you must have done something really bad!" They'd smirk and take bites of cookies as they went by. And I'd sit there, praying. Thinking about how I was the only one doing the "right thing" and how God must be very pleased with me. And then I'd go home to a house devoid of any celebration or brightness, and a mother who was oblivious to how isolated I truly felt. To a mother who didn't realize how greatly it affected me to remember being 5 and having Christmas, and then suddenly never again have a frosted sugar cookie or a candy cane or a wrapped present again in my life.
You'd think that when I grew up I'd just get over this stuff. I decided when I was 18 to go back to a semi-"normal" life and celebrate Christmas with the rest of Christian America. I decided I wanted my kids to enjoy a lighted tree and giving gifts and all the other traditions that go along with this holiday. But I am *not* over it, it deeply affected me and my mother never gave me a bit of comfort over the emotional isolation I endured at school. And as a result, I sort of tend to go overboard with my own kids at Christmastime. It is MY Christmas too. It is every present I never opened or gave, it is every Christmas cookie I never got to eat in school. It is every piece of Christmas fudge I watched my classmates eating. It is like you put that me-child into a windowless room full of Christmas and let her have everything she ever missed, without the attached guilt. That's how Christmas cookies are for me.
I make them every year. I am obsessive about it. I want to see my kids enjoy them. I love giving them to people. I love seeing Christmas cookies all over my kitchen and knowing that IF I WANT ONE I can have it. I CAN and no one is there taunting me or sitting me in the hallway while they indulge.
I AM going to make cookies for Christmas every year for the rest of my life. I am as protective of that as anyone could possible be, and if I even *consider* not making Christmas cookies, my claws come out and I start flipping. This is something that just *is.* I think my childhood experience has made it so, and I am not interested in *fixing* it. I gave up baking for 11 other months of the year to make my life healthier, but Christmas baking is going to happen, without guilt, and I am going to enjoy every second of it.
I've discovered that I don't have to EAT a bunch of cookies to get the absolute comfort and happiness of Christmas cookies. It's the baking, the making them with my kids, the decorating them, the watching others enjoy them... it's the PERMISSION to have them that I need. And I have that. I do watch myself, and limit the number of days cookies are around. I do allow myself some Christmas cookies... it sort of feels like I am healing the inner child somehow... not with food really, but with the whole normalcy and embrace that Christmas feels like to me. I need that. I need a tree with lights, and a present to open, and Christmas music.
So yesterday when I started getting emails with photos and recipes for "new" types of Christmas cookies in them, I started to drool. I thought about making every single type that I saw. I worried about how I would manage to limit myself to just a few types of cookies to bake. I started to save the recipes on my computer, and then, I just didn't. I deleted them. Because really, my soul is completely soothed by the simple tree-shaped frosted sugar cookies that I remember seeing my classmates eat as a child. A couple of chocolate crinkles, some molasses cookies, a bit of fudge. It's enough. It makes me happy. The point isn't to add fancier and "better" cookies and treats every year. The point is tradition and enjoyment. And I can do that with what I have.
Maybe you want Christmas cookies, too. Maybe it reminds you of baking with your Grandma, or the family gatherings of your childhood, or special holidays with your Dad. Whatever. It's ok. Food associations are not BAD. Just be aware. Explore your reasons and your feelings. Decide what it will take to bring you that feeling of connection and comfort, and let it be. Have your cookie if it makes you happy. Just understand it and plan for it. A few cookies in December will not destroy an entire year of healthy eating, but denying ones' self an emotional connection might. Know yourself, make a plan, and enjoy the holidays.
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