The Christmas Cookie Exchange - TOTALLY Cookie Free

Susie is hosting a fabulous party at her place and she asked us some probing holiday questions.

Favourite holiday recipes-

Ok. I am in an enviable position where I don’t do any cooking at all for Christmas. My mom does it all. I think this is a combination of the fact that I am single, I haven’t had much of a kitchen let alone a dining room for several years and that I am a lousy cook. I cannot even fathom organizing a food extravaganza on the level that my mom does every Christmas season. Honestly I can hardly manage to feed myself the rest of the year. Being vegetarian I have no clue how to cook meat. While I enjoy Christmas dinner I would be just as happy with a pizza or sandwich. (Don't kill me mom!) Anyway, so I just show up and eat and leave.

Special Traditions-

Once again I have to be the party pooper and say that my family doesn’t really have any hard and fast traditions. Some come and some go over time. Here are a few things that have been traditions in the past or are still going on for now-

-My mom rarely cooks a turkey for Christmas. We have beef. Or everybody else has beef. I don’t eat meat. It might be a roast or a Wellington but it is never a bird.

-I’d say over the last decade my mom has made rumballs and Christmas cake. I love the rumballs and usually eat more than my fair share but hate the cake. This is good for my dad as it is his favourite and he doesn’t have to share.

-Probably the only one real tradition I can think of is that my dad gets Christmas pudding with hard sauce for Christmas dessert. It is a British thing. And every year the rest of us have a different dessert of some kind because we think pudding and hard sauce is nasty.

-For several years I used a bowling trophy for a tree topper. I was poor and it seemed sparkly and festive so up it went. I now have a smaller fake tree and the trophy is too big. I still have it just in case I go ‘big tree’ again.

-My parents used to give my brother and me a giant Toblerone bar in our stocking. We have asked to end that tradition as we no longer have youthful metabolisms to process such a vast amount of chocolate.

-As kids my brother and I never really left cookies and milk for Santa because we lived in an apartment and didn’t have a fireplace for stockings etc. My dad used to say Santa came in through the key hole.

-We open our gifts Christmas morning and as kids my brother and I were allowed to open our stocking first (usually at the crack of dawn) while my parents woke up and got coffee ready. Then we would open gifts together as a family.

-My brother and parents often go for a walk after breakfast and gift opening. I stay behind and have a nap.

-I am so boring you (and myself) with these totally lame so-called traditions….

Favourite Gift to Give-

-once again I have to be the bah humbugger. Over the last several years the giving of family gifts has been fairly lacking in total surprise as we give each other lists of what we need. We try to give gifts that are useful and needed. As a result there are not a lot of fanciful or extraneous presents. For me, I love giving a gift that was very desperately wanted. Whatever that might be any given year.

What You Wear When You Don Your Gay Apparel-

-Oh jeeeez….we used to get dressed up for Christmas but now it is jeans and a shirt. Typically my parents are more dressed up than my brother and I.

How boring are we? But at least we are boring together.