My sibs and I started a tradition when we were young kids. With mom's help, we started making our own Christmas cookies. We made a big double or quadruple batch of sugar cookie dough. Then we would roll it out and use cookie cutters to cut out dozens of different shapes. Oh – we had lots of normal Christmas shapes: Santas, reindeer, candy canes, angels, Christmas trees and all the other traditional icons. We ALSO had things like sharks, cars, a cowboy boot, giraffes, flip flops, hearts, hands, airplane, a pineapple, ducks, kangaroos, cows, and whole bunch more – a pretty funny wide assortment of odd things.
We would then make up a bunch of bowls of different colored icing and little bowls of nuts, chocolate chips, all sorts of sprinkles,and a ton of different types of toppings. And then the fun would begin. We would spend hours baking and decorating the cookies. They weren’t especially delicious, but we had a lot of fun making them. It was an entire evening of laughing, singing along with Christmas songs, making cookies and generally having a good time with family members.
We have continued this for all these years. I’ve included a bunch of pics from one of our most recent times. These days, there are spouses, kids and nieces and nephews, but we always make time for it. It’s as much a part of our Christmas celebration as all the “normal” stuff. Although - if you look at some of the cookies, you'll see there's few of them that are not very normal and reflect the late hour at which we were finishing up the decorating. You can click on the pics to enlarge them and see all our fun shapes!What fun and unique traditions does your family do for the holidays?
