Every year, without fail, when I was a kid growing up at home, the Friday after Thanksgiving was the day to make roll-out Christmas cookies. In the afternoon, Mom would roll-out and bake double batch after double batch. Then in the evening, after a leftover turkey supper, we would get to work decorating them, assembly line style.
Mom would frost them, always and only with white butter frosting. Then my sister Pat and I would trade off sprinkling them with the proper colored sugar, green for trees, red for poinsettias, yellow for bells. Whoever was not sugaring, would put on the accessories. A few mulitcolored sprinkles on the trees, three (no more, no less) silver non-pareils in the center of the poinsettias, two red cinnamon beads for berries on the holly. They were all beautiful - and all exactly the same. It never even crossed our young minds to be creative and try something new. We were too afraid of throwing Mom off. (I think she was menopausal my entire childhood.)
As each cookie sheet was filled with cookies, Dad would take them to the deep freeze in the basement. Once they were frozen they would be carefully and categorically stacked in a huge round Tupperware container to be returned to the freezer until Christmas.
When Christmas rolled around, as the Christmas cookie platter emptied every other day or so, we ventured into the freezer to fill it with Spritz, Peanut Blossoms, Christmas balls, and our beloved roll-outs. There were so many cookies down there and Mom was so stingy on dispursing them, that sometimes the Tupperware container didn't empty until February.
Luckily, Pat and I kept an eye on the situation and whenever we were playing with our toys in the basement, we would snitch a cookie or two. Mom pretended that she didn't know, but now that I'm a mother, I know better.
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