I have a cookie problem.
Normally, this first weekend of December that’s due to descend upon us would be the time when my family would open up our home for a Christmas party with our wonderful neighbors. Every year, in preparation for that party, I bake approximately four dozen each of at least five types of cookies. If you care to do the math, that’s approximately two hundred and fifty cookies.
In addition to the cookies, I make homemade peanut butter cups, chocolate covered cherries, Oreo truffles, turtles, chocolate covered pretzels, and a large batch of fudge. I might have a candy problem, too.
It’s a tradition that probably sounds pretty familiar to a lot of you. People have been making special Christmas cookies and desserts since before there was an official Christmas to celebrate. As early as the tenth century, solstice festivals in many parts of the world involved feasting before the long winter ahead. Animals were slaughtered because meat keeps better in the cold than live animals do. Final harvests were brought in. Springtime beer and wine were aged enough to be properly enjoyed. And newfangled spices from newfangled trade routes made interesting sweet treats attainable.
Then along came Christmas with all its many traditions including baked gifts lovingly given to friends, and neighbors, and jolly fat men sliding down chimneys. Actually, leaving cookies for Santa may have been influenced by a pre-Christmas tradition as well, involving the ancient Norse god Odin and an eight-legged horse who would happily exchange small gifts for some treats.
But none of that helps me in my current predicament. Because in years that aren’t 2020, I make enough sweet treats to feed my neighbors until they are sick, take plates of goodies to share with friends at church, send snacks to the break room at my husband’s workplace, satisfy my constantly hungry children, gain five pounds myself, and even have enough left over to leave out for Santa on his big night.
Making these treats is a Christmas tradition, among so many traditions we just can’t make happen this year in the midst of Covid. My kids want to make and enjoy them all—all five varieties of cookies and each type of candy—despite the fact that there will be no large gathering of neighbors, no in-person church activities, and a changing work situation that has drastically limited break room treat-leaving opportunities.
We can’t even count on Santa to be much help. He’s always forgetting to grab his cookies on Christmas Eve and I end up eating them myself. I can’t blame him. It’s a busy night and most chimneys are probably a tight squeeze.
Yes, I can make smaller batches, but it’s still a lot. And yes, I can deliver some to neighbors, but a lot of people are understandably a little weird about accepting homemade goodies in our current environment.
So, I have a cookie problem, which admittedly might not be the worst problem to have. But it is starting to look like I’m going gain more than five pounds this year.