I won't be doing any cookie baking, since the holidays find me--as usual--alone. Yes, Lord Kenmore is as unlovable in real life as he is on the screen!
It's fun seeing others recipes, etc, though...
I remember cookies in the past, though. Some memories better than others. The worst memory was when my mother and I helped out my grandmother for Christmas. Her oven was terrible, and it was frustrating having to deal with the expectations people had. Everyone--Grandma included--thought Christmas should be 100% the way it had always been, and 100% perfect... In the midst of baking one year, we ran out of flour, and I went out to get some. My grandmother, of course, had One Accepted Brand. But I bought the store brand, instead. Part of that was the argument that the money was coming out of my wallet, and I saw no difference between Gold Medal and the store brand, given what we were doing. But there might also have a venting act, and a way of rebelling against "we must have this the way it was for the last 50 years down to the last sugar sprinkle!"
Happier memory: the last year we had Christmas in my childhood home (and in some ways the last "normal" Christmas I ever had-after that, for the rest of my mother's life, we spent Christmas with my grandmother, whose style was considerably different in a number of ways, and who had huge gatherings every year, not just 2-3 people), my mother got ambitious with baking cookies. I think it's possible we'd baked Christmas cookies before--I have a vague memory of rolled out sugar cookies, with some cheap cutters that had Christmas themes. But I can't say for sure. But we never did much, until that last year, when my mother got really ambitious. It was odd--because I don't think she had much interest in baking. She would bake cookies, but it was always fast cookies. I can't remember what she did that year, but there were some that weren't fast. There were more than two of us could eat--although I was young, and could pack cookies away easily--and I think we gave some away to neighbors. I don't know all who got them, but I do remember taking some over to a 80-some year old woman nearby. I suspect some went to work with my mother, too.
