The Gift of Christmas Cookies

Personal Perspective: The joy of holiday treats, traditions, and the meaning of giving.

Reviewed by Margaret Foley

Key points

• Ultimately, it’s not the gift itself that’s most important, it’s the meaning it represents.
• By keeping traditions going, we keep the communities we’ve cultivated through them connected.
• This chocolate chip cookie recipe honors two friends who made/delivered 2,544 cookies every year for 50 years.

This past weekend, I went to a holiday party hosted by friends I hadn’t seen for a long time. I was asked to bring cookies, and my 21-year-old daughter Izzy obliged. That afternoon the house smelled warm and delicious as Izzy made chocolate chip cookies from big balls of dough that she froze to make thick-crusted Christmas cookie shapes. I was accompanied to the party by three plates of cookies wrapped in tinfoil, gift bags with Christmas presents, and birthday gifts from summer birthdays I’d kept forgetting to deliver.

After unpacking and making room at the community table for the plates of chocolate chip cookies, I began to make the rounds to deliver the presents. Eventually, I found one of my friends and gave her a belated birthday present and Christmas gift. My friend laughed and sounded frustrated at the same time. She shared she didn’t have any gifts to give in return and said I didn’t have to bring presents. I assured her that I was giving because I wanted to and not due to any expectation of something in return.

Our interaction made me think about what giving means to us. Does giving today mean we expect something in return? I felt confused. Even a bit rejected.

How we can share our spirit of giving with others this holiday season? In our book, Eating Together, Being Together, we talk about “giving love by sharing goodness,” with one example being food that we make and share with one another.

My experience at the party also made me think about how we receive gifts. Isn’t part of caring accepting a gift that reflects the giver’s feelings about the person they’re giving the gift to?

In accepting the gesture (the caveat of course being that it’s an appropriate gift), we acknowledge the expression of friendship and care it represents.

A few thoughts about the meaning of giving this holiday season are shared below. As always, take what works for you and leave the rest.

Giving Love by Sharing Goodness

I recently spoke with my late mom’s cousin, John Killian, age 96. John reminds me of my grandfather, kind, smart, expansive in his thinking and love for others. John spoke about the Christmas cookie-baking tradition that emerged from the deep friendship between his late wife Sally (Gephart) Killian and her best friend Betsy Faber. It's a tradition that started in 1958 and continued for the next 50 years. For several days before Christmas each year, Sally and Betsy would bake about 212 dozen cookies.

That’s 2,544 cookies!

Then Sally and Betsy, along with their respective husbands John and Fred, would personally deliver each of the 2,544 cookies to friends and family throughout their communities.

It’s understandable that the business of life can easily get in the way of engaging with others. Our routines might dictate what we do and how we spend our days; siloed against connecting with people in ways that let them know we’re thinking about them. Sharing goodness through food is a way of reaching out to others, as reflected in the thousands of cookies Sally and Betsy made, and the many travels John and Fred made with them, to make sure they were delivered.

Accepting Care From Others

I’m not going to lie—I was a bit taken aback by my friend’s reaction to the gifts I brought her.

What meaning does accepting a gift have for the giver and the receiver?

I remember being 4 years old and in preschool. It was Christmas and we were just about to break for the holiday. There was an air of excitement in the classroom, the anticipation of a different schedule in the weeks ahead. I spent my time that morning excitedly making gifts for the teachers, diligently cutting out magazine shapes and lacing them with string to make necklaces. By morning’s end there was quite an ensemble of jewelry: a gingerbread house necklace, a Santa necklace, the list went on. I was so happy to give them to my teachers; to remind them they were in our thoughts over the break.

Later that day we packed up our cubbies and got in line for pickup. As our line moved forward, we happened to walk by the garbage can. And there they were. The many necklaces I made were piled upon each other in the trash. Our line moved quickly for dismissal so I just got a glimpse, but the image stayed with me.

I never told my teachers what I saw.

This story reminds me of how important it is for us to accept gifts, that our reciprocity is to share in the connecting message that the gift represents.

Ultimately, it’s not the gift itself that’s most important, it’s the meaning it represents.

Build a Community by Giving

Sally and Betsy’s story amplifies the joy of building a community through giving. John talked about how he and Fred would sit in the kitchen while their wives baked, sampling and counting the cookies.

“Betsy’s husband and I would scrounge to get a few scraps for ourselves,” John laughed. “We enjoyed the fellowship of these best friends.”

Perhaps it’s because giving is so much more than the actual item we give that we build a community around us when we do so. This reality was epitomized by the community of loved ones that Sally, John, Betsy, and Fred had in their annual 2,544 Christmas cookie baking and delivery.

“Giving is everything,” said John. “I’ve dedicated my life to giving service and love.”

As the holidays unfold, this blog invites us to think about what giving means for us and, if we’re fortunate enough to be on the receiving end of a gift, to explore the larger meaning of the gift we receive.

Keep Tradition Going

By keeping traditions going, we keep the communities we’ve cultivated through them connected.

After Betsy passed away, John’s niece Susan and Betsy’s niece Sue kept the Christmas cookie tradition alive. Each year they made the Christmas cookies, donating them to the annual cookie sale to support the church.

Christmas Chocolate Chip Cookies

Cookies from Grandma is the self-published book that emerged from the 50 years of Sally’s and Betsy’s cookie-making. Their chocolate chip cookie recipe is featured below, with Izzy's added twist of making them jumbo sized to be shaped by Christmas cookie cutters.

Ingredients
6 Tbsp. butter-flavored Crisco
1 ½ cups light brown sugar
1 egg
1 ¾ cups flour
1 tsp. salt
¾ tsp. baking soda
2 Tbsp. milk
1 Tbsp. vanilla
1 cup semisweet chocolate chips

Supplies
Christmas cookie cutters

Directions
Preheat the oven to 400°F

Sift together flour, salt, and baking soda and set aside. Beat together Crisco, sugar, milk, and vanilla. Add egg. Add flour mixture and chocolate.

Stir together until the batter is fully mixed, and then place the batter in the freezer for 15 minutes. Putting the batter in the freezer helps the ingredients combine together. Doing this in the freezer takes much less time than having your dough sit in the fridge for a couple of hours.

Take the dough out of the freezer and form it into large round balls that are like mini tennis balls. Place them together in a bowl before putting on your cookie sheet.

Grease the cookie sheet and bake the cookies for 12 minutes. If they expand so much that they meld into each other, there’s no need to worry. You’re going to cut into the dough with cookie cutters anyway.

Take out the cookies and let them cool. Then use your favorite Christmas cookie cutters to make fun shapes.

Top tip: Keep the extra cookie pieces that are left after cutting out the cookie shapes to make yummy mini snacks.

This blog is dedicated to friendship and in memory of Sally (Gephart) Killian and Betsy Faber.