It’s so cold out there. The snow is still there…Id expected it to be gone by now. Bella’s paw prints are still discernable across the deck and the stars are so beautifully bright…clear, crispy early mornings are good for that. The cookies are ready for frosting and for decoration as I rolled them and cut them out last night. Now they rest, cooled and ready for the last step. Soon they will be famous Monschein family Christmas cookies. It’s in that moment, when I sit by the fire, looking at the tree, dipping that cookie in ice cold milk…it’ll officially be Christmas!

There is just something about the whole experience…I’m a little girl again. The kitchen was small, with very little counter space. We had a small table in that room that served as our dining room table. THAT is where cookie magic was made.  Mom would roll out the dough and cut out Christmas cookie shapes with old metal cookie cutters. Those cutters looked just like my grandma’s. In the oven they’d go as she cut more and more trees, and bells, and stars, angels and gingerbread men. My sisters and I would be there with her, in the kitchen. As she’d pull those baked beauties out and placed them on huge pieces of foil, to cool, we would remain diligent, standing guard over the foil, just hoping that a gingerbread man would have lost his leg in the process and we would eat the injured cookie. Just let one of the stars crack in half and we would be at the ready…”Can we eat that one, PLEASEEEE?” As time is a concept that is lost when we are young, it took FOREVER for those cookies to cool. Mom brought the last batch from the oven and transferred them to the cooling area without incident or injury to any of those last cookies. DARN! Why did she have to be so careful!? And, now that I’m airing my grievances, why did she scrape that bowl and beaters so well before she presented them to us for the fun that followed as we spooned and licked up every visible trace of cookie batter? Hmmmm, probably the very same reason that I did and do.  Some things live on through the generations.

Now is when it got serious in the dining room. This is where the production line was set up and we all had our positions and our job to do…and it’d better be good.  Mom would have the bowl of famous Monschein Family Cookie Frosting before her, with a wide knife. We all had our cookie sheets in front of us and bowls of different colored sugar and other decorations.  She’d apply a thin layer of frosting and then place it in the center of the table for us to grab, decorate, adorn with at least one red hot and then move it to the corner of our cookie sheet.  And we’d better hurry, too. That frosting dried so fast, and no decorations would stick, after that. Not even the RED HOT!  God Forbid!!! We would continue this exercise until there was not room for one more cookie. We’d then carefully move to the kitchen table with our full sheet and transfer them to the wax paper that had been made ready to hold all of our works of art. I always knew which cookies I’d decorated. I made them special because I’d be dreaming of eating them once we were done, and I wanted them to be the most delicious. 

Mom kept on frosting and somehow, always kept up with us.  I mean HOW???  I really don’t know. We had a 3-1 advantage over her. And not only could she keep up, but she had time for quality control. She’d go out to the kitchen to inspect our work. Lord knows, if you didn’t put at least one red hot on your cookies….shed bring it back to the table to re-work.  Those memories are treasures that feel so warm where I keep them, deep down in my heart and they live again every Christmas at the first dunk.  The very taste of them is so much more than the sum of the ingredients. It’s the taste of generations of us around the table, doing things in a way that would make our German ancestors, the creators of the original Famous Monschein Christmas Cookie recipe, proud. At least, that what’s been repeated over the years.  My mom and her 4 siblings, at the table, decorating these cookies…..Me and my sisters….my kids….and hopefully their kids…and so on.  Some folks would say that they don’t know why I love these cookies so much. Even my kids would choose a Keebler Elf cookie over our family cookies.  My husband says, “Maybe if you added more sugar?” This makes me laugh because nothing, absolutely nothing, could make me change one, single thing about these cookies. My recipe is written in my mother’s hand and it has butter stains.  The recipe card is torn and the edges have been loved off.

This year, because each Christmas can be different, I’m frosting and decorating by myself. Where this could be viewed as a sad story, when, before, it held so much laughter and love…I’m kept company by the memories of it all.  I say, that a hot cup of coffee and a Christmas movie will be just the right backdrop to cookie decorations, 2020. Maybe Elf, again. “Hello, Buddy the Elf, What’s your favorite color?”  Just the anticipation of the first ready-for-dunking cookie, in my hand will get these cookies done in good time.   To the tree I will go.  Cookies in one hand, milk in the other and I’ll think of my grandmother.  I’ll think of my mother who delights in us making our family cookies in our own homes. And I’ll send love to them through the universe. So much happy in one little cookie! Thank-you for my memories.