Sometime in the beginning of December we always got together with my cousins to decorate cookies. The seven kids and Aunt Prissy and Aunt Charlie dutifully churned out a few hundred icing masterpieces. Or maybe it only felt like hundreds. I know the kids were always ready to quit before the naked cookies ran out.
A few sub traditions have arrived over the years:
Ugliest cookie AKA chamo cookie - Made by mixing all the icing colors together before plopping it on a cookie in one scoop. These tend to show up more frequently towards the end of the activity.
Charlie and/or Rachel make John and/or Rebecca cry.
Most Amount of Icing Contest. Participants of this contest are forced to eat the cookies once the measuring is done.
Aunt Prissy and/or Aunt Charlie have to yell at someone to stop putting the wrong knife back in the wrong color of icing.
Adam and John talk about guns.
Charlie and Rachel talk about bowel movements.
Katie recites an ancient epic poem inspired by the season.
Rebecca makes sure all our waste is composted or recycled.
Aunt Prissy and Aunt Charlie make up yet a new verse to Good King Wenceslaus.
Someone talks about their "Schwetty Balls"
Speaking of Schwetty Balls...bet you didn't know that candles and snowmen could be turned upside down and made into phallic symbols. I won't go into what they do with Santa and the angels. (I say "they", because I would never participate in something so obscene. Okay, I may have given a gingerbread girl breasts.)
Gore Cookies...reindeers spewing blood, decapitated Santas, the usual.
Favorite Cookie Shape: Christmas Tree - so many possibilities
Worst Cookie Shape: Tiny Angel - A waste to spend so much time on a cookie you can eat in one bite.
This tradition is still going strong with the next generation. Now we have our "cousins" Christmas prior to the actual holiday in order to make sure everyone can be in attendance at the same time. One of the aunties brings the cookies and one brings the icing to whoever is hosting the event. And part of the joy is hearing them discuss who's turn it is to bring which in the days approaching our gathering.
Idea - why don't you stop switching back and forth and just be in charge of the same thing every year?
We’re not going anywhere.
4 days ago
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We have traditions that go back years! I don't know why they are still carried on! But one of the ones that I love is having a stir of the Christmas Pudding and making a wish! We all have a stir and make a wish even now! But the highlight of the Christmas Season has to be the Christmas Ball that we hold here every year. We missed it our last year because of the deaths of my parents, but I'm looking forward to it this year. It takes a lot of organizing, but is always well worth it!
ReplyDeleteAre you still using the wrong kind of frosting on your cookies? : )
ReplyDeleteTina
Ooo, a "ball"...sounds very Cinderella. hope you have a much better Christmas this year, Alice.
ReplyDeleteT - hmmmm - next post
My fondest Christmas memory is one where my father said, "C'mon. We're going out to eat." "Dad, nothing's open on Xmas Eve!" "Son, that's what the Chinese Pagans are good for. Being open on Christmas Eve."
ReplyDelete(Not very PC, but it was 1989, and we DO have Chinese cousins.)
Katie wanted to comment, but she's too busy memorizing her epic poem and irritating me with her incessant rhetoric with cheese puff breath.