Cooking Cookies

"celebrate yearly"

Esther 9:21

I'm going to start with the answers to the Christmas carols, because I know I promised them yesterday, but, well, you know, things happen!  Like Christmas!

So here are the answers:

1.  O Little Town of Bethlehem
2.  O Holy Night
3.  O Come, All Ye Faithful
4.  Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer
5.  Silent Night
6.  Silver Bells
7.  Santa Claus is Coming to Town
8.  The Twelve Days of Christmas
9.  We Three Kings
10. We Wish You a Merry Christmas
11. What Child is This?
12. Winter Wonderland

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I hope you enjoyed your Christmas celebration with your family.  You know what I found myself thinking about today?  Not the presents, not the wonderful meals we have together.   Cookies.  Cookies of all different kinds.

Chocolate chip and oatmeal and some kind of chocolate/powdered sugar thing I don't even know what it's called.   And chocolate fudge and peanut butter fudge and peppermint fudge.  And Linzer Torte cookies and Hello Dolly bars and chocolate covered pretzels and toffee.

And more.

It's interesting to me that we have more sugared goodies than all of us could possibly eat.  They're just sitting out on the counter on beautiful plates (along with some tangerines and grapes) and we nibble on a little something when our sweet tooth calls to us.

But why so much?  Two or three batches per couple adds up to a lot of cookies, but we do it anyway, every year.  And I think it's because we each want to bring something special to the gathering.  It's either a case of bringing something automatically (like the peanut butter fudge) because it's a family favorite, or you know someone in particular loves it.

Or it's a case of finding something new that sounds interesting or tasted delicious, and you think others will love it too.   It's showing love, in a very sincere way, and wanting to share happiness with family.

Sometimes getting together is hard.  It takes work to be patient with a house full of people with conflicting needs and wants and priorities.  It's hard to try to constantly think of others, especially when giving one person what they want means not letting someone else have what they want.  So we don't always succeed in "doing unto others".

But bringing something yummy is our way of bringing our best.  We go to the effort of researching recipes, and buying and baking and carefully packing and shipping or carrying them on an airplane, all to share them with others. 

We can't always give our best to those around us, but we can still give.

~ "you shall take fine flour and bake twelve cakes with it" ~

Leviticus 24:5

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