Advent Calendar - December 8 - Christmas Cookies

At Geneabloggers.com (a group of worldwide genealogist writing about their family history) the prompts or suggested ideas for the month relate to the Advent season. This is my fourth (hopefully not last) post using the Advent prompts.

Our prompt for today is:  Christmas Cookies



Mom always made tons of cookies for Christmas.  Well, I assume she 'always' did....I remember as a teenager the house always smelled so good - it seemed from the start of December until the big day.  She'd make fudge too - two batches, one with nuts, one without.  And fruitcake - two different kinds - a loaf one and another in a cake pan.  There were cut-out sugar cookies and tons of others. We kids were 'happy campers' during December.  I don't remember helping her, but that doesn't mean I didn't because I don't remember a lot of things.

When hubs and I bought our first home we were 'warned' by neighbors of the 'bad people' who lived next door to us and that we should stay away from them.  Poor next door neighbors never had a chance - we stuck our noise up in the air and ignored them totally....which surprises me that we did this because it's out of our nature but I guess we just wanted to appease the masses.  Anyway come our first December in the house 'next door neighbor' shows up at our door with a wrapped box - of assorted home made Christmas cookies!!!  Then there was the discussion of should we eat them or not.  Of course we did!  For 10 years after that there was always a box of cookies from her....I remember Mrs. Elliott well.  Our kids looked forward to them all year and they devoured the cookies as fast as they could.  Mrs. Elliott was probably a little younger than I am now, she was divorced and she still had a teenage daughter living at home.  We not only got cookies for Christmas but we gained good friends.  The daughter and I became best friends and we still keep in touch now (40 years later).  This incident taught me a lesson that I should have already known - "Judge not, and ye shall not be judged"  (Luke 6:37).

Since the kids are grown I've stopped baking too many cookies at Christmas time - but I still try to bake one batch of simple cut-out cookies for the hubs to enjoy.  Other than that he's limited to cookies at parties or at friends.  This way we don't overdo and eat them all!

Have you ever left a cookie for Jesus?  After all it's His birthday!

Mary Post Warren

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