When I was growing up, Christmas was the time for baking. Not just any kind of baking, but specifically cookies. Oh, my mother made the annual fruitcake along with pumpkin and mince pies, but what the four of us kids liked best were the cookies. Not only were they fun to eat, but we had fun making them. It was a group project to assemble everything from pfeffernusse (a German cookie that really does have pepper in it) and Russian tea cakes to date pinwheels. And of course there were the cookies we cut out in the shapes of trees, stars, reindeer. You name it, and if it had a Christmas theme, chances are good we made it. At least in my memory, the month between Thanksgiving and Christmas was filled with many hours in the kitchen, turning dough into delicious cookies.
As much as we enjoyed the cookies we’d made, the truly special ones were the ones that came in the mail carefully packed in plain popcorn. Our paternal grandmother didn’t have much money, but each year she made her special Christmas doll cookies for her grandchildren. These were as different from the cut-out cookies we made as Christmas was from Fourth of July. We used a variety of shapes. She used only one. Our dough was gingerbread. Hers was classic sugar cookie. Ours were thin and crisp. Hers were thick and chewy. The biggest difference, though, and what made Grandma’s cookies so special is that they were baked with love. They were a gift of time, talent and caring as well as flour, sugar and eggs. And that’s why, though decades have passed since my siblings and I received our last box of Grandma’s cookies, I still smile as I remember them.
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The Christmas Star Bride
Because love isn’t limited to the very young.
Esther Hathaway lost her one true love at Gettysburg twenty years ago, but that doesn’t stop her from celebrating her niece’s wedding by commissioning Jeremy Snyder to paint her portrait. Will Esther's prayers for God to ease her loneliness be answered by a wounded vet?
The Christmas Star Bride is part of The 12 Brides of Christmas, twelve historical novellas that celebrate the joy of love at the most wonderful time of the year. Each novella is available for download for only 99 cents.
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