December 23, 2022
Christmas is a time for love, laughter, and togetherness. It’s a time for magic, sparkle, and children’s smiles. Faithful friends who are near or dear or whatever Judy Garland sang. It’s also a time for cookies. Properly decorated ones, if you’re in my Mama’s house. Lynn Jones is the Queen of Christmas. The Evergreen Empress. The Jolliest of Joneses.
My Mom has made magic happen for her children, grandchildren, family, and friends for decades with her unending love, creativity, and attention to every single detail. I have blissful memories of Christmas mornings with my siblings that will last me my entire lifetime. However, it wasn’t until later in life until I learned that my mother is the actual living, breathing Mrs. Claus…with claws.
Each Christmas at our house we ended the meal with a British classic dessert called trifle. My mom spent three days making it and it was revealed ceremoniously accompanied by “Ooooohs and aaahhhhhs” from the family.
A jewel-toned masterpiece and an homage to our commonwealth heritage, it’s basically fancy layered jell-o, some sponge cake, custard, whipped cream, topped with decorative fruit. It was a favorite of the grandparents and children alike but I wondered why they loved it so much.
Sure, I like jello and fruit but the only plausible explanation for all the excitement was that both the elderly and the babies lacked the dental fortitude required for chewing. Meanwhile, I had a full set of adult teeth at age 4. I’ll let that image sink in for a moment. It cannot be unseen.
I was looking for something I could sink my teeth into. Along with trifle, she served impeccably decorated shortbread cookies. Different, perfectly cut, festive shapes with meticulously placed decorative sprinkles. I am the eldest and certainly the bossiest, but I must have been dumber than a box of rocks because I just assumed that decorating on this level was commonplace.
A careful tip of the sprinkle jar and voilà: a perfectly decorated cookie. Cut to my first Christmas at home after starting college. I’m all grown up with three whole months of University knowledge and unbridled independence under my belt, ready to learn from the Christmas Queen herself. Raring to go and anxious to learn her tricks of the trade and experience the magic-making firsthand, downstage center.
I eagerly offered to help my Mom in the kitchen. What a beautiful opportunity to bond and to pass on the traditions from mother to daughter. What a charming way to spend an afternoon indoors with my beloved Mama while snow fell silently outside.
Chickadees flitted about on the back deck picking up birdseed and our fireplace crackled happily in the living room. “I’ll decorate this pan of shortbread!” The eighteen year old moron exclaimed with glee. My mother glanced in my direction with stern judgment and handed me a sheet of those perfectly cut shapes, 2 ramekins of decorative sprinkles, and a pair of tweezers. “What are these for?” The wide-eyed fool of a college student inquired. “Tweezers are how I get the sprinkles to sit exactly in the right place,” my mom responded with a smile and razor thinly veiled pointed direction.
I sat at the kitchen table, happily singing along to Mariah, Ella, and Céline, and expressed my festive artistry through the noble medium of decorative cookie. Tweezers be damned, I joyously and generously dumped heaps of sprinkles on every cookie. Each one was a Kandinsky of color, a party of Pollock, a Frida of freedom from order.
Artistically strewn patterns that only someone with one term of post secondary education could comprehend. I proudly gazed at my pan of perfection before popping them in the oven. Eight and a half minutes later I presented my masterpiece to my mother prepared to humbly accept the praise I had so well earned.
My loving mother, dressed head to toe in red and green festive garb and a Christmas apron, smelling of home, joy, and butter took one look at my creation and spoke one word: “Garbage.”
She swiftly rolled up every cookie into a crumbly, sprinkly pile of rubble and threw it directly into the compost bucket. My jaw on the floor and my pride in the toilet, she looked at me quizzically and said, “What? We can’t serve those cookies to anyone. You didn’t even use the tweezers.”
I wondered if Klimt’s mother ever put any of his stunning sensual images through the paper shredder? Did O’Keefe’s mom crumple up and toss any of her exquisitely detailed vaginas…I mean flowers? Did Mrs. Van Gogh tell little Vinnie his haystacks had to Van Gogh straight in the trash? Art is pain, I suppose, and it was my turn to feel the burn.
Perhaps in a couple hundred years my progressive cookie artistry will be understood by the alien robots who inhabit our lifeless earth. Perhaps my dramatic gifts can be attributed in part to this moment of fractured confidence and the humbling sting of brutal honesty.
Either way, I’m going to attempt to make the holidays as magical and special as my mom made mine for me with the skills and tools she gave me. Tweezers optional.
P.S. I warned my mom that I was going to share this story to assure her that I find it hilarious and not traumatic at all. She responded with, “Go ahead and share it! You definitely weren’t decorating your best that day. You’re much better at it now.” Thanks, Mrs. Claws.