Holiday Traditions: Our Annual Christmas Cookie Bake-A-Thon

These pictures are from our our Twelfth Annual Christmas Cookie Bake-A-Thon in 2010. Today I am participating in the fourteenth year of this tradition. Same friends (with welcome new additions), some of the same cookies and some new ones, and definitely the same fun!

I’m sure it started innocently enough.
Fourteen years ago, three of us decided to get together to bake Christmas cookies. We each planned to make a few recipes, and brought our own ingredients and equipment to work side-by-side in my kitchen. It’s a busy time of year, but it was nice to carve out some solid girlfriend time to relax, catch up, and get one big holiday “to do” done.
Our families didn’t complain because we came home with a variety of delicious cookies.

Somehow, despite job changes, family changes, and local moves, we’ve managed to keep this tradition going for 14 years! Our group has grown, but we all are lawyers who worked at the same firm at one time or another. Although work brought us together, it is friendship that has made this event such a priority that we set aside a weekend day in December to get together.

This year there will be five of us baking. We each chose two different types of cookies to make (in double batches to have enough to share) and one of us pre-made cut-out cookies that we will decorate while other cookies are baking.