Friday Fun – Family Traditions

Today and yesterday my sis and I have been baking our first batch of Christmas cookies.  Don’t they look awesome?!!

They are!

These puppies are made from scratch from our grandmother’s recipe.  And when I say scratch, I mean get out the flour,   butter,   sugar,   rolling pin and   a few secret ingredients, and spend an entire day making this magic. By the end of the day we are usually so tired of cookie dough and icing that we never want to see another cookie again!  (That usually doesn’t last long, though.)

Our cookie baking tradition goes back a few generations.  Our dad’s mom is the originator of the recipes as far as we know.  (Unfortunately I don’t know if they were passed down from her mom or not.) Grandma Esch would invite her daughters and daughters-in-law over for a day of baking each Christmas season.  My mom then passed the recipes along to her mom, my Nanny, and Nanny took over the tradition of baking with Jes and I each year.  For years these cookies went unbaked once we grew up and left home.  Three years ago when Jes moved to Nashville we decided to institute “sister baking day” the first Thursday of December.  I can’t wait for the day Jes has kids and we pass the tradition on to them!

There is just something so precious about the memories created from holiday traditions.  I think the beauty of family traditions is in relishing the memories of traditions past, adapting some traditions to a new day, new family and new circumstances and creating new traditions along the way.

I’ll never recapture the exact tradition of baking with Nanny when I was a little girl, but the tradition of baking with my sister each year now is just as special.

What is one of your favorite holiday traditions?