Christmas Cookies and Elegant Parties

I've decided I'm lazy when it comes to making Christmas cookies. While I collect recipes for the perfect rolled and cut-out sugar and gingerbread cookies, the truth is, I never get around to making them. I'll do anything where you can drop hunks of dough onto a cookie sheet. Or spread dough into a layer in a pan and bake, then cut. And every single Christmas I say I'm going to decorate beautiful cut-out cookies, and never do. When it comes to chilling the dough, rolling it out, cutting out cookies, baking them, cooling them, then decorating, I'd rather take a beating. What is wrong with me? I even have a whole box full of cake and cookie decorating supplies: piping bags, couplers, and decorative tubes; colorless extracts so as not to distort the pure white icing color, so it mixes nicely with the paste food color, even a nice assortment of upscale sprinkles, edible glitter flakes, and dragees (tiny silver candy balls--that's your new word for the day).


I've decided that this is some as-yet unnamed psychological complex affecting those of us who came of homemaking age in the early Martha Stewart years. Martha hit the scene about a year after I was married in 1988. She made caring about your home, garden, cooking, crafts, and homemaking in general cool again. Then it got out of hand. And we were faced with exquisite snowflake cookies that had to have taken a pastry chef 2 hours to decorate, never mind mixing and baking. We couldn't just frost a homemade cake anymore. We had to learn how to roll fondant and make gum paste flowers. We couldn't just help hostess a bridal shower, we were told we could cater an elegant wedding reception for 100 in our backyards. And many of us gave up. And instead of being inspired to try something new, we were scared stiff to try, knowing our results would never look like that glossy magazine with the fuzzy filters on the camera lenses to give every candle a soft, flattering glow.


In my mind, I give sit-down dinner parties for 12. I use my fine china and crystal, and have wine for each course. The centerpiece is crafted by me to echo the handmade place cards, which I calligraphied in sepia tones using a robin's tail feather. The heirloom silver is polished and the cloth napkins monogrammed. The candles never drip and the souffle never falls. Then I hear the screech of the record player........


In reality, I break out the plastic Solo plates and cups and if less than 10 people show up, we can use our everyday metal forks instead of plastic. I plop a ladle into the pot of chili and set out a container of soru cream and cheese to go along with it. The napkins always match because they are on a big roll, all printed the same and neatly perforated. There aren't enough chairs, and a couple of us eat leaning over the counter or balancing a plate on our laps. Preschoolers run through the house announcing they have to pee-pee as their mothers race to get them to the potty on time. I run out of iced tea or lemonade, but no one seems to care. The house is filled with happy laughter and vivid conversations. And the only clean up required is hauling a bag of trash to the garage. And people happily eat the bar cookies I baked at the last minute, impressed that I know how to turn on my oven. So if I don't get around to decorating cut-out gingerbread people cookies this year, I'm sure you'll understand. I'm too busy living life and enjoying myself to slow down enough to fill a pastry bag with tinted icing. I'm busy doing what Martha Stewart seems to not do much of: Living.