No Pink Cookies

How do traditions get started anyway? My family did not make Christmas cookies. My mother didn't believe in cookies - or desserts in general - and although she did make some concessions to Christmas she didn't go in big for traditions. We always had a tree - although it didn't often materialize much before Christmas Eve and my mother generally tried to take it down the day after Christmas. And we did have Advent Candles and a Birthday Cake for Jesus - largely, I think, because my mother tried it one year and we kids decided it was "tradition".

So why does Ajigasawa Church decorate its tree with real cookies no matter how busy the season? I think it started with my Grandmother's pink cookies...

But our cookies now

are a LONG way from Grandma's Pink Cookies!

My Grandma made (very) soft molasses cookies frosted with anise flavored pink icing and cut in slabs. She made them a lot. But I guess the recipe died with her. My cousin's wife, hearing how much I liked them, tried to make them for our wedding dinner on the 27th of December, 1975. (Hence the Christmas connection. My Grandmother was more likely to make them for the 4th of July picnic.) But they just didn't taste like Grandma's Pink Cookies... For the next 10 years I spent my Christmases trying new gingerbread cookie recipes. Quite silly really as I imagine my Grandmother cut slabs because the cookies couldn't hold their shape ... and just imagine hanging pink slabs on the Christmas tree! But I guess by this time I was heavily influenced by Tasha Tudor.

Christmas Cookies in the mid 1980s

After many years I gave up trying and now I just make Spice Cookies because they're softer than most the gingerbread recipes I tried and - more to the point - I never seem to have any molasses in the house come Christmas. (I order molasses from Tokyo.)

Then my daughters rebelled against the anise icing. So we are now a long way from Pink Cookies. But as, my mother would say "come hell or high water" (or is that deep snow?!) we still have cookies every year. "Its tradition!"

Sarah, Sachimi, Shion and Ayaka cutting the cookies.

STWs, John Orme and Shirley Ku, stringing the cookies

Our Sarah strings the last cookies

while Sarah Heidebrecht looks on.

Ayaka, Shirley, Sachimi, Shion and John