Baking Cookies

In Fiddler on the Roof, Tevye had it figured out: "Because of our traditions, we've kept our balance for many, many years. Here in Anatevka, we have traditions for everything: how to sleep, how to eat... how to work... how to wear clothes.”

Keeping balance, he says, is important.  Traditions keep us from falling over.

Despite well-practiced Christmas baking traditions, I decided to rebel this year, and self-talked myself right out of making Christmas cookies.  Straight-laced, that’s what I’d be. We don’t need cookies, I insisted – it’s antithetical to our health goals.  And goodness knows, at our age you have to be intentional about health. Sugar is highly overrated, I added (feeling a bit self-righteous and hypocritical), not to mention refined and white and addictive.  Besides, I have a lot of other things to do.  

Another voice, also mine, insisted I must be demented.  What kind of grandmother am I, anyway, if I don’t even make Christmas cookies? 

This afternoon, in a moment of automatic pilot, I grabbed my recipe files (I have several), pulled some dog-eared cards, and mixed up four different batches of cookie dough – all in a flash.  The baking process fell together with assembly-line precision, just like in the good old days, and our house filled with thick, heady olfactory indulgences: cinnamon, cloves, ginger, chocolate, mint, orange,  lemon, cranberry, butter – lots of decadent Amish butter.

I felt much better once the baking was finished – the cookies packed up for their respective destinations, and the kitchen recovered.  Perhaps Tevye was right.  Maybe I needed to bake cookies to hold things steady, to keep from tipping too far into the excuses of seniorville.