Visited by the Ghost of Christmas Cookies Past

Here we are, Christmas Eve, dawn, and I sit in my kitchen not baking Christmas cookies.

My mother is up in a heavenly kitchen waiving her heavy, browned krumkaka iron in the air in a threatening manner and cussing me out.

Christmas cookies were always a highlight of her year. I can't even name all the varieties she baked. Thankfully, I have her old, yellowed, framed copy of the Beverly Review, which did a full-page feature story of her back in 1972 that tells me she used to prepare 15 different types of cookies for Christmas.

Krumkaka (pictured), sandbakelser, pepparkakor, sugar, rosettes, forgotten kisses (merangue), sprut (spritze); those are the seven I remember because they were the seven I liked. There were others I remember that had jam in them, and then others that have completely left my memory altogether.

Come to my house today, just hours away from our Norwegian-styled Christmas Eve festivities (although we'll thankfully skip the lutefisk until we celebrate with Kevin's more traditional Norwegian family), and you'll find a few varieties given to us in decorative tins from friends.

I've hidden a few sugar cookies that my friend Nancy and I baked a few weeks ago. But that baking venture was more of a social call as I hadn't seen her in ages, and the cookies not hidden or given away to Nancy to share with her husband were quickly devoured by the four boys who live in this house. (I'm including my husband in that count, mind you.)

I want to have a beautiful buffet of cookies to serve tonight and tomorrow and to give to my patient neighbors and loving friends. I've crowded a corner of my kitchen counter for a month with my cookie sheets, flower, sugar, cardamon (a popular Norwegian spice), chocolate, sugar sprinles, vanilla, baking soda, baking powder, my Kitchenaid mixer, mixing bowls, wax paper, parchment paper, as if having all my materials out in plain sight would somehow help me carve a few afternoons or evenings of baking into my month.

But it hasn't happened. I have no idea how my mother did it all. I know I was a perfect angel as a child, so I'm sure that helped. But she did have my two trouble-making brothers to handle, too.

I hope to get at least one variety baked today, maybe two, and while the boys all play tomorrow with their new whatevers that Santa brings them, maybe I can get another done.

Next year will be different. This year, well, I'll just have to deal with that angry ghost who haunts me. Sorry, Mom.