by Evelyn Guy

Created on: November 29, 2010

Nothing Says Christmas Like Cookies from the Oven

My earliest and fondest memory of Christmas cookies is of receiving a big box of homemade cookies from my Aunt Sis.  Every year, we got the box, and every year it has many new varieties of cookies.  I don't know where she found so many recipes for cookies.  But, I know that we anticipated the arrival of that box almost as much as we did the arrival of Santa.

The box always came about two weeks before Christmas.  Memaw, who raised us, began saying every day from about the second week of December on, "Wonder if Sis's box of cookies will come today?" We always hoped so.  We had to go to the post office to pick up our mail, and we all went together for those few days.  Any other time, we all fought over who had to go to the post office.

When that box arrived, we couldn't wait to get upstairs and look in it.  We knew a few old favorites would be in there.  There was the Cherry Melt-Aways.  They were always my favorite.  Then there were the famous Tollhouse Chocolate Chip cookies.  But, Aunt Sis could make them better than anyone I have known before or since. I bet she make them better than the original Nestlé's baker. There was always Run Balls, which Memaw claimed might make us drunk, so we only got one apiece daily.  Seems they disappeared quickly, though.  Last, but not least, of the old favorites were the Oatmeal Raisin Cookies. 

All these cookies could set one's mouth watering at just a glance.  But, even more exciting was the hovering over the box to see what new varieties she had come up with this year.  Some of the new ones were variations of old favorites, but some were entirely new.  I remember the Lacy Molasses Roll-Ups, a very exquisite, formal cookie.  I have tried and tried to find her recipe, but can't.  Then, there was the fruit cake variety.  Yes, it was a cookie.  And, though I don't like candied fruit, she had included the parts of the candied fruit that I really like, plus tons of nuts, all encased in a most delicious dough.  Um!

Aunt Sis got her cookie making skills and love early on.  Memaw said she made her first cookies when she was a preschooler, maybe four or five.  She would spend hours and hours in the kitchen before the holidays, baking cookies.  Even during the depression, when sugar was rationed, she managed to still make her cookies.  Grandad traded

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