Mo-Sassy-Lassy Cookies: Christmas Traditions

Traditional Christmas Treats

For my family, Christmas has always been a time for traditions, especially the culinary kind. My childhood memories of Christmas center around two things: being with family and cooking and baking. From the earliest age, I remember my mother in the kitchen baking goodies for an entire week, packing them beautifully, and then giving them as gifts to her friends and neighbors.  My sister and I helped her bake cookies, make candies, and create savory treats that we would later deliver throughout the neighborhood, as happy as Santa's elves to be part of the giving tradition.  

I can remember watching my mother with a sense of wonder and awe at her ability to create Christmas magic in the kitchen. She whipped up candies like melt-in-your-mouth pecan divinity, buttery peanut brittle, and rich chocolate fudge.  In the cookie department, she excelled at Russian Teacakes, sugar cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies, and the most bomb-diggity chocolate chip cookies you have ever eaten.  Savories like sausage-cheese balls, meat pies, and breads would be baked later in the week to eat on Christmas Eve.  After opening presents, Christmas morning always ended with a breakfast of homemade quiche. I knew as a grown up, I wanted to be just like her.  Even though I couldn't articulate it at the time, I understood that all of these things she made came from a place of pure love and affection and a true appreciation for the meaning of the Christmas season.

As an adult, I do the same things in my kitchen during the Christmas season as my mother did.  My children and I spend the week before Christmas making candies and cookies, and they get the same thrill my sister and I did in delivering them to family and friends. I make some of the traditional specialties my mother perfected, such as Mexican Wedding cookies and sugar cookies, and some new treats have been added including chocolate covered pretzels and molasses cookies, (or as my son Jack calls them Mo-sassy-lassy cookies.) Even with the differences, the idea and intent remains the same--giving the gift of love and affection to those we care about and spreading the joy of the season and the warmth in our hearts.

The other thing I enjoy most about this particular tradition is the quality time I get to spend with my children and my nephews.  They all gather in the heart of my home...the kitchen...and we spend time together laughing, listening to carols, and just being together.  My sister and I talk about when we were children, telling stories of Christmases past, or when our children were little and did certain memorable things that will become a part of their own personal mythology they can then share with their kids.  It is a perfectly wonderful time that elicits feelings and emotions I wish would last the entire year through.  Everything is a little brighter, warmer, happier, and sweeter.

The past two days my children and I have inhabited the kitchen and dining room, making peanut butter cups, chocolate covered pretzels, mo-sassy-lassy cookies, Mexican Wedding cookies, and the like.  We've laughed, we've talked, we've created memories that will last a lifetime, yet one more time.  To me, this is the very heart of Christmas, the best part of the season--home and hearth.  I  just want to wish everyone a very Merry Christmas and a wonderful season of celebrating their own traditions with their families and friends. Remember to celebrate the love, joy, and spirit of giving and have the very happiest of holidays.

Jack, Joshua, and Abby with Chocolate Pretzels and Peanut Butter Cups