yakity-yak-yak: Tradition.....TRADITION! (Post 4)

Note: Post title to be read/sung Tevye-style (you know, "Fiddler on the Roof.")

As stated in the 3 previous "tradition" posts (http://kay-yakity-yak-yak.blogspot.com/2013/01/traditiontradition-post-1.html, http://kay-yakity-yak-yak.blogspot.com/2013/01/traditiontradition-post-2.html, http://kay-yakity-yak-yak.blogspot.com/2013/01/traditiontradition-post-3.html) we have a lot of family traditions. One of these is "Veteran's Day Christmas Cookie-Making." I'm not sure when exactly this tradition started, but I can find pictures of this activity as early as 1995. It began with my mom and me baking and decorating Christmas cookies to freeze for Christmas on Veteran's Day after the local Veteran's Day parade. As my brothers and sisters married, more cookie-makers entered the picture, and we had to make more and more cookies; thus turning our one-day cookie-making marathon into a several day stretch. This tradition has now morphed into a science of sorts. Each of us has her own specialty. I do the gingerbread cookies, my mom does the Santas, etc. We have the cookies all made before we meet, and then only do the decorating all together. (We have 8 types of cookies-2 gingerbread and 6 sugar. Types include Santas, stars, holly, trees, gingerbread men, teddy bears, candy canes, and snowmen. We have changed and retired some types over the years. The reindeer had to be "retired" because their antlers were always breaking. We had to make about 3 reindeer to get one unbroken set of antlers.) We are now doing almost 1200 cut-out and decorated cookies per year. My decoration assignment is the white frosting, and it takes almost 17 pounds of the stuff to do all the cookies. (And that's not even ALL the frosting-that's just the white). However, we have become quite efficient, and have a lot of fun all being together for several days decorating cookies. And, bonus: it's sooo nice when December rolls around to just go to my freezer and get the cookie plates for friends and neighbors when it comes time for Christmas treat delivery.