If you aren’t up to your elbows in leftover holiday cookies this week, you are probably either in traction with both arms held rigidly skyward or dead. Yes, friends, ’tis the season for finishing the spoils of holiday baking. As if you didn’t already have enough to do with the big Christmas clean up, exchanging gifts that don’t fit or are too hideous for public viewing and coaxing the cat out of the Christmas tree, now you’ve become the family’s pushy cookie peddler.
Our family tradition is to bake a batch of everybody’s favorite Christmas cookie. When we were a family of four, we let everybody pick a couple of favorites. Then suddenly we found ourselves with two sons-in-law and we extended the tradition to them. The rule at our house is that the chosen variety must be an official Christmas cookie: no fair trying to beat the system by sneaking in regular old chocolate chip or peanut butter. Yes, those kinds are yummy, but still. Mom is chief baker so Mom makes the rules. Son-in-law number one chooses rum balls (he likes his cookies loaded) and son-in-law number two goes for white chocolate chip (slipping them through on a technicality because, ok, they aren’t theoretically your everyday-garden-variety-chocolate chip cookies). My spouse prefers rollout cookies (he likes seeing me slave over a hot rolling pin). My two daughters are easy – holly cookies and peanut blossoms, both old Christmas favorites. And I choose my preferred cookie from a revolving list, assuming I have enough strength left to wield a spatula after making all of the other cookies.
Wikipedia defines Christmas cookies as “traditionally sugar cookies cut into various shapes related to Christmas.” It goes on to say that, since the 1930s, on Christmas Eve children leave cookies and milk for Santa, “though many people simply consume the cookies themselves.” No kidding? Are there actually people who wait for Santa and when he doesn’t show they have an emotional breakdown and eat the cookies themselves? With a really big, really spiked glass of eggnog?
No matter how you like your holiday cookies – be they bars or balls, rolled, dropped, shaped, molded, meringued, filled, pressed or refrigerated, we all love those cookies. Cookies are, in fact, America’s favorite dessert. Served naked, iced, sugared, glazed or with a thumbprint packed with jam, nothing is prettier than a festive plate of Christmas cookies. And nothing smells better than the scent of cinnamon and vanilla baking in a cushion of sweet cookie dough.
Unless, that is, you’re a fish.
No, that is not a misprint and yes, this statement actually pertains to Christmas cookies because last year at the University of Washington, using sophisticated lab equipment, scientists studied, umm … sewage. This undoubtedly fun activity allowed researchers to discern an actual rise in sweets consumed by Seattle folks during the holiday season. Now I grant you, fruitcakes probably make their way through the Seattle sewage system on a regular basis, either via the, er … “conventional” method or because you bolted to the facilities for a fast flush of the hockey puck, I mean … fruitcake you spit into your napkin when Aunt Fern decided to serve that 25-year-old masterpiece lurking in the back of her cupboard.
Yes, a definite upsurge in fragrant flavorings findings occurred in Seattle sewers with two essences dear to our hearts: cinnamon and vanilla. The study centered on environmental effects to Puget Sound resulting from changes in the human diet. The delicate blend of aromatic flavors was of interest to scientists because fish navigate using their sense of smell to find food and, in the case of salmon, to locate their way home before spawning. A wrong turn brought about from seeking a little cinnamon could be tragic. Think of the catastrophic consequences if all those spawning salmon were thrown off their scent and instead of swimming upstream they turned into your driveway.
Fortunately, you probably don’t have to worry about a kitchen floor full of hormone-crazed, flip-flopping salmon anytime soon. Scientists learned that, although the flavors of Christmas will make their way into the sewage system and, in turn, into the waters beyond, the inhabitants of our rivers and oceans haven’t been adversely affected by the sweetness of holiday cookies. But if you think science hasn’t come a long way in documenting our daily habits, think again. In Seattle, for example, heightened caffeine levels (think “home of Starbucks”) in a majority of water samples were detected under the water’s surface as far down as 640 feet.
So when holiday time rolled around last year, the new research showed that not only were cookie flavorings elevated, it was possible to derive a fairly close estimate of how many actual cookies were consumed by the good citizens of Seattle. Drawing data from a published scientific study, researchers estimated that the population served by the local sewage treatment plant downed the daily equivalent of approximately 160,000 butter or chocolate chip-type cookies and an additional 80,000 cookies containing cinnamon during the weekend of Thanksgiving alone.
The bottom line, though, is that the consumption of all these yummy sweets of the holidays weren’t detrimental to the creatures of the sea. Unless you count the fact that female protein was found in some male fish.
Now this sounds ominous, doesn’t it? All those male fish swimming about with female protein lurking beneath the gills? But before we all panic and think of an ocean full of “girly-fish,” I’m thinking that this sort of gender transcendence might not be all bad. Should the human population follow the example of the fish, who knows? My own spouse, for example, might find an overwhelming urge to head to the kitchen to whip up a few batches of the family’s favorite Christmas cookies. And maybe I can summon up a couple of male proteins in my system. You know, just enough to flip on a football game and let him bake.
Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill 24 years. Reach her at
Ga*********@*ol.com.
