Cut Out Christmas Cookies: A Sweet Folk Tradition

Christmas-cookies

Some of my happiest, earliest memories involve my mother’s olive green KitchenAid mixer, a spatula, a set of cookie cutters, and the warm, blissful scents of Christmas cookies baking in the oven.  I didn’t know then that I was participating in a folk tradition; I just knew that I loved to bake (and eat) cookies as Christmastime (or any other time).

The practice of baking Christmas cookies dates back to the 16th century Europe.  Gingerbread, which traces its origins to the Crusades, was likely the first type of cookie to become associated with Christmas (partly due to the fact that Christmastime was the only time of year when common people were allowed to make gingerbread — usually, only members of the appropriate bakers’ guilds were permitted by law to bake it).  This and other holiday cookie traditions, such as a German custom of  hanging cookies from Christmas trees, reached America via the various migration streams throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.  In particular, we Americans have the Dutch and the Germans to thank for many of these earliest cookie customs.  It’s very possible that some of my own family’s traditions involving Christmas cookies may trace back to our German ancestry.

gingerbread-man-cookie-cutter-1In America, and in my own childhood, one of the most popular forms of Christmas cookie is the cut out cookie.  In fact, Americans have so embraced this type of cookie that its use is now most commonly associated with America.  Cut out cookies are owe their existence to the custom of mumming.

Mumming was a largely English/Irish custom in which people acted out stories, usually those stories associated with the birth of Jesus.  There was often music, singing, and dancing associated with mumming.

Jesus cookieHow does mumming tie in with cookies?  This is largely an American adaption to the practice.  In those colonial areas of America in which the Anglican church (or the Episcopal) was predominant, it became common practice to use cut out cookies as part of mumming.  The cut outs themselves had been introduced earlier in the 1600s through German and Dutch settlers.  Combining the German/Dutch tradition with English/Irish tradition resulted in a new American folk custom.  Through the practice of mumming with cookies, children learned important values and stories connected to their religion both through listening/watching and through active participation.  The cut out cookies were always religious figures, such as Baby Jesus, never common people.  Although my own family did not practice the custom of mumming with our cookies, I well recall growing up with a few friends whose families did practice a version of this custom.  Moreover, in an example of practicing a folk custom transnationally, I used cut out Christmas cookies to help teach Korean children English words and American Christmas customs when I was living in South Korea a few years ago.  Though my practice had deviated from the original religious motive of mumming, it is interesting that I inadvertently borrowed from a folkway when teaching children.

Gingerbread_Man_realThe secularization of cut out cookies at Christmastime probably owes its origin to the creation of edible Yule dollies in the 1800s.  These were cut-outs in human shape, quite similar to the gingerbread men that many Americans enjoy creating (and eating) today.  However, while the decorative icing was similar to today’s practice, there was one notable difference:  the faces were made out of paper.  Usually children would cut the faces from magazine pictures, although some children would draw a face of their own and then cut it out (less common).  Children would then play with the Yule dollies before eventually removing the paper faces and devouring the cookie portion.  Yule dollies met with considerable controversy, as it was a definitely secular departure from the earlier practice of mumming.  Many people were concerned that this represented a secularization of Christmas itself; viewed historically, it is clearly part of an overall trend as Santa Claus became a more and more prominent figure in Christmas traditions.

In my own childhood, I, too, loved to bake Yule dollies, although I did not know of them under that name.  I took great delight in cutting out little cookie people and in decorating them with ludicrous amounts of icing.  Often I would act out little stories with my cookie people, usually ending with one of them going off alone to explore a giant cave (my mouth), from which he would return greatly hobbled, having lost an arm or leg to the beast who lived within its depths.  I also, like most children I grew up with, made sure to leave a plate with a few of my little cookie people and perhaps a sampling of other cookie creations out for Santa Claus.

4215043034_dd50748155Leaving cookies for Santa as part of the Christmas cookie tradition started (most likely) in the 1930s.  Amidst the ongoing Great Depression, many American parents worried about their children growing greedy at Christmastime.  Leaving cookies and milk for Santa Claus was viewed as a way to encourage generosity and also reciprocity.  Since then, it has become part of the American Christmas Eve canon.

In keeping with the nature of the Christmas cookie folk tradition, which has evolved in stages over the years, I added my own contribution to the custom several years ago, when I was eighteen.  At that age, I wanted to adapt certain traditions specifically for myself.  And so, I created my own special tradition of creating a brand new cookie recipe every Christmas.  However, there is an important twist:  I do not record the recipe.  Thus, every Christmas I make one type of cookie that is unique to that year, and which can never be repeated.  One year, it was a wonderfully sumptuous mint brownie cookie; another year, it was a chocolate, cherry, and nut creation that I shared with my closest friends. To me, it my special cookie tradition is a metaphor for the year that has just passed, which also can never be replicated, or even perfectly recalled.

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