Day 47: 24 December 2025

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 Journal


I wanted to have some sort of cosy, wintery… possibly Christmas-y short story for today’s post. Maybe something with the birds or a mouse or a hedgehog?

But no story is flooding my mind. Not more than a whisper of an idea.

So instead… I’m going to talk about the one Christmas tradition that has stuck with me my whole adult life. Sugar cookies.

One of my earliest memories is they of decorating sugar cookies with my mom and brother (at the time my other brother and sister hadn’t been born yet).

So it makes sense that sugar cookies would continue into my Christmas traditions as an adult.

In Taiwan, myself and a few of the other teachers used to invite all of the students who lived on campus to come cut out, bake and decorate hundreds of sugar cookies each December. (I or myself along with a few friends would make the dough ahead of time so it had plenty of time to chill). We’d all meet in the school’s kitchen (which also served as a classroom sometimes). Before the students would arrive we’d set up different work stations with a combo of: dough, two or three cookie cutters and some flour. One of the teachers always manned the massive industrial ovens, so as students cut out the cookies, they’d  bring them up and set them on one of the large trays. There were counters full of cooling cookies. And by the time the students would finish cutting out all the cookies, the first batches of baked ones were cool enough to decorate. Then the students would make icing and get creative! Students were allowed to eat some of the cookies, but many of them were packaged to be handed out during Christmas carolling at local businesses and restaurants the following week. The students loved it! And so did I!

When I moved to Hungary, I’d wanted to continue the tradition. My first year there, having again made the dough ahead of time, one of the youth group’s and I cut out, baked and decorated sugar cookies together. The cookie to person ratio was more edible that time, so most of the cookies were eaten by the end of the night (as other activities had gone on post cookies) and the few that were left I encouraged others to take home. After that first year though, I ended up mostly just making them at home (and handing out to fellow teachers before the Christmas break). Some years I’d use icing (which was what we did in Taiwan) and others I’d use buttercream (which is what we did growing up).

In Ukraine, I also just had a day in December where I’d make sugar cookies at home. Here it was always buttercream.

And when I moved to the UK, the tradition continued.

I wasn’t sure if it would happen or not this year, as Little One is only 5mo old. It definitely took longer than usual, because even though he’s fascinated with food and doesn’t mind being in his swing in the kitchen… his attention span is limited. Fair enough. They’re all decorated as of this morning though! I was thinking of doing two different patterns, but I ended up deciding not to push my luck and stuck with one uniform design. I can’t wait to eat a few tomorrow!

And I’m so excited for Little One to make them, cut them out and decorate them with me when he gets a little older!

 





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