I baked over 200 dozen cookies for Christmas this year.

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image showing I baked over 200 dozen cookies for Christmas this year.

Alternative-Feed3613 on December 13rd, 2021 at 01:58 UTC »

2400 cookies?!?

bubonis on December 13rd, 2021 at 02:02 UTC »

An image gallery.

So, the story.

I'm the youngest of five kids with the next-oldest being 7 1/2 years older than me. When I was young, making Christmas cookies were a big deal in my house. It was a family event, one of the extraordinarily few things we did as a famiily that didn't involve fighting or sarcasm. Mom would make the dough, the kids would scoop it and put it on trays, mom would bake, kids would taste-test. Sugar cookies were the penultimate event as mom rolled out the dough and we kids selected cookie cutters, carefully cut out our shapes, and decorated them with sugar and sprinkles and whatever candies might be available to us.

The finished cookies were a staple around the house with a huge decorative dish in the living room which almost mysteriously seemed to empty itself every couple of days. Trays of cookies were given to friends and neighbors and teachers. Sneaking a cookie before leaving for school was considered a highlight.

As time passed the house got emptier. When I was 10-11 my sisters went off to college, my father passed away when I was 14, and my brother passed away a year after that. So it was just my mother and me. Cookies became less of an event and more of a chore and, one year, my mother told me that she wasn't up to making cookies that year.

So I stepped in.

I had been helping mom cook for as long as I could remember and I generally knew how the cookies were made. I pulled out the ancient, stained, and dog-eared Betty Crocker Cooky Book and got to work. I made chocolate chip and peanut butter that year, and my mother pronounced them absolutely delicious. Over the next few years I made more and more cookies, reinstating our tradition of giving out cookies to everyone. Mom packed cookies for my sisters to bring back to school with them. I made sure we had enough so she could pack boxes for her friends and for her church. She took great pride in telling everyone that I had made the cookies, and everyone loved them.

I moved out of my house in 1994, sharing a tiny studio apartment in Manhattan with my then-girlfriend and what may have been the smallest oven I'd ever seen at the time. Christmas 1994 saw me making cookies, six at a time (because that's all that would fit), in that tiny oven. But I did it. I made nearly 50 dozen cookies that year and pretty much the whole apartment building smelled like cookies. The doorman got a big box, of course. I traveled up to my sister's house in Massachusetts with a veritable suitcase full of cookies for her and her family, and I came back empty. It was glorious.

Christmas 1994, my mother gave me my own copy of the Betty Crocker Cooky Book, which she (my mother) lovingly signed.

Over the years the "Great Cookie Event" developed itself. Eventually it wasn't just for family and friends; everyone got a taste. Coworkers, building doormen, the mailman, the UPS guy, pretty much everyone I had regular contact with got cookies. Somewhere around 1998 I started distributing to the homeless in the areas where I lived and worked. This got a lot more emotional than I ever thought; a lot of those people hadn't had a homemade cookie in a very long time, let alone around Christmastime. This blossomed into supplying Christmas cookies to local family shelters (which is still happening even today).

Some years I'd focus on only two or three cookies; other years I'd make a dozen different varieties. Eventually I settled into a pattern where I'd always make peanut butter, chocolate chip, and oatmeal. I would then pick 1-2 varieties that were favorites amongst those who got them from me. These included snickerdoodles, chocolate crinkles, thumbprints, sugar, almond, and chocolate-peppermint. And then I'd pick one variety that was unique (more or less) to that year. In the past that included maple walnut, double chocolate chip, gingerbread, and mint ravioli (which were not fun to make but were fun to eat). This year it was pumpkin.

Christmas 2007 was the only Christmas up to that point where cookies weren't made, because due to momentary insanity Wife and I decided to move into our new house on December 24. Our friends were disappointed but understood. For the next few years as we got to know our new neighbors, more cookies were made and delivered. It became a thing in our neighborhood.

Then, unfortunately, in early December 2017 my mother passed away. I handled all the arrangements and was the executor of her will. Even if I had the time to bake cookies, I was in no shape to do so. I was a train wreck. Every Christmas following was similarly tough on me. Christmas cheer for my daughter was hard enough without immersing myself in cookie making. So for the next few years there were no cookies. I bought a couple boxes from the supermarket bakery and called it Christmas. It wasn't the same, everyone knew it, but nobody could blame me.

This year was filled with revelations and resolutions. In short, I got better in a lot of ways and when the holidays rolled around I was ready, willing, and able to attack them with claws outstretched. I told my friends that I'd be making cookies again this year and they responded with vehemence. I think I've delivered, and I think mom would have been proud.

Danger1672 on December 13rd, 2021 at 02:29 UTC »

I just made shy of 1000 cookies for my 45 neighbors. We delivered them this morning. I was so happy to do it after skipping last year due to the pandemic. The funny thing is people think it's a lot of work and they always say why do you do it? Well, it's pretty easy it brings everybody in the neighborhood a little bit of happiness. Also I'm hoping every year that inspire the rest of the neighborhood to be nice to each other and it works. We deliver the cookies two weeks before Christmas and everybody else after that starts giving each other attention it's awesome. Making cookies is easy. Giving a day up to make cookies for some people that probably won't appreciate it... also easy.