I know there’s more to the holidays than baking, but baking is simply one of those things my family does this time of year. It’s a ritual, a practice, an experience playing out over time that builds layers of memory and meaning. Even if I weren’t baking for holiday gatherings or for gifts, I’d still make time to do it. And if I had only time enough to make one recipe, I’d choose my grandmother’s gingerbread cutout cookies (click here to jump to recipe).
I can picture myself as a child chatting with my grandmother at her kitchen island as I helped her roll out the gingerbread dough. And I can see vividly the kitchen of my childhood home where my mother and I lined up cooling racks up on all available surfaces to accommodate the cooling gingerbread cookies – racks on the stovetop, racks on countertops and the kitchen island, even racks on the sanitized surfaces of a washer and dryer that stood against one wall of the kitchen. We needed all the space we could find for those cookies!
This recipe is unlike more traditional gingerbread recipes because it uses orange extract (in addition to cinnamon and nutmeg) to balance out the strength of the ginger. It’s a great recipe. It’s also a great ritual. The process is time-consuming, after all, with rolling out the dough so thin, and cutting out each cookie, and then decorating each cookie with raisins before the cookie sheets even go into the oven. It takes time, and as my memories tell me, all that time gave us space to talk.
My memories are less a matter of particular baking days or eventful conversations and more like a meaningful blur, a suggestion of time processing life and whatever happened to be on our minds just then as we mixed ingredients, rolled dough, and cut out cookies. These days I still find comfort and joy in baking gingerbread cookies with my mother. It’s one of those things we do together.
I surprised myself recently by zeroing in on the gingerbread cookie baking scene in my Sacred Grounds holiday novel The Joy of a Field. In this season marking the book’s one year anniversary, I meant to reread the book and reflect back on the journey the characters took when their holidays didn’t turn out as they’d hoped. Disappointment, after all, is a thing. Especially at the holidays.
And yet, instead of sitting down to read the story from the beginning, I found myself jumping ahead to begin with the gingerbread cookie scene and then wondering after the fact why I’d done it. Not much action in those few pages, after all. No significant plot twists. It’s simply a time when the main character admits things to her friend that she hasn’t yet admitted, either to herself or to another person. And as I reread that scene, I noticed how these two friends’ baking ritual worked, allowing a shared holiday task to open up that space of intimacy for whatever their season needed just then.
While my Sacred Grounds novels aren’t autobiographical, that element of baking gingerbread cookies, which I did draw from my own life, has been reminding me how important process can be over outcome this time of year, when tasks and priorities pile on top of each other. We aren’t always at our best because of it. Especially in seasons like this, I’ve been reminding myself how meaningful a holiday ritual can become when I give it my attention, let it be whatever it is, and watch it doing whatever work it does in me and in my relationships.
I’m thinking I want to prioritize such rituals in my life this month. I may not respond to every single opportunity. “No” is, after all, as necessary a word as “yes” when it comes to managing our finite time. And yet, I hope to organize my calendar to give a selection of these holiday rituals in my family and in my communities a good, open-hearted chance to do whatever they might want to do with me this year.
What about you? Are there particular holiday memories or rituals that have been speaking to you recently?
No matter how you organize your calendar this holiday season, I’m wishing you some meaningful holiday moments this year. And if you’re curious to try out my grandmother’s gingerbread cutout cookie recipe – either for the flavor or for the ritual – you’ll find it below. I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Gingerbread Cutout Cookies
By Katherine Ridinger
Ingredients:
½ c. margarine
½ c. butter
½ c. sugar
1 egg
2 T. dark corn syrup
2 t. orange extract
3 c. all-purpose flour
2 t. baking soda
2 t. cinnamon
1 t. ginger
½ t. cloves
½ t. nutmeg
½ t. salt
raisins cut in half (for decoration)
decorator’s icing (if desired)
Instructions:
Blend butter and margarine. Gradually beat in sugar until light and fluffy. Add egg and beat until smooth. Add corn syrup and orange extract and mix. Mix all dry ingredients together (don’t sift the flour) and stir into butter mixture.
Form dough into a ball and wrap in wax paper or plastic bag. Chill in refrigerator for at least a couple of hours (though it will deep for several days).
When dough is chilled, roll it out on a lightly floured surface to ¼ inch thick. Cut into gingerbread cookie shapes. Arrange on cookie sheet and use raisins for eyes and buttons. Bake at 375 degrees for 9-10 minutes. When cooled, decorate with icing if desired.
Callie J. Smith 