Seasons (gr)eatings.

When I was little, the approaching holidays always meant one afternoon of breaking out the cookie cutters, rolling pins, and sheet trays to make our stand-by Christmas treat: sugar cookies. My mom had this recipe from an old magazine that we used year after year, making chocolate and nut-covered logs, Christmas tree-shaped cutouts decorated with colorful ice cream toppings as ornaments, snowmen with chocolate-dipped top hats, angels, bells, stars, and teddy bears (that always took on a slightly frightening look because we used mini M&Ms for eyes that looked unnaturally large compared to the rest of the body -- I remember a particularly scary blue-eyed bear one year). My mom also made Swedish tea log, lemon squares, almond crescents, rum balls, and peppermint bark. We (or rather, she) would wrap them all up in colorful paper or cellophane bags and give them as gifts to friends, neighbors, bus drivers, homeroom teachers, music teachers, and coaches. (We would keep the other six dozen or so in tins that lasted until my mom would give up and freeze them sometime around February.) Over the years, our tastes matured away from our old sugar cookies, but I still find myself missing the making and decorating of cookies while drinking hot chocolate from my perch on a kitchen chair.

The first Christmas I lived alone, I was feeling nostalgic and decided to make treats of my own to send to friends and to bring to the office (I have a slightly less personal relationship with DC bus drivers than the one who picked me up and dropped me off every day for four years of middle school). You could say I've continued the tradition on my own over the years, taking an early-December trip to the Container Store (my Mecca) to pick out tins, boxes, cellophane bags, and ribbon to package my goodies, and then spend a weekend baking and assembling packages to deliver and mail.

This year's boxes contained some familiar items: my mom's lemon squares, a modified rum ball, chocolate bark, and a few other items including mini versions of my Halloween Snickers cookies (back by popular demand). From the reviews, it was another successful year (aided significantly by the arrival of my new mixer, without which the homemade marshmallow would not have been possible).

Homemade graham crackers (surprisingly easy to make and surprisingly faithful to the original taste) for "S'more" cookies:

...Sandwiched with homemade marshmallow and drizzled with chocolate: 

Rum ball remix, three ways: 1) creme de cacao, 2) Grand Marnier, or 3) brandy, dipped in chocolate: 

Dark chocolate bark with toasted almonds and fleur de sel, inspired by these Ghirardelli morsels: 

Every year I get a little anxious -- that the chocolate won't set, the booze will ooze, the cookies will all shatter by the time they arrive at their destinations (I learned the hard way the virtues of careful packaging). But the phone calls and e-mails I get upon receipt reassure me they've arrived in one piece, as well as remind me of the reason my mom did it/why I do it today: to spread holiday cheer and thank the people we're grateful to have in our lives.