Festive Holiday Decorating

I have a confession to make.

This year, for the first time in my life, I broke the cardinal rule in cookie baking: I used a mixer. My mother is turning in her grave and yelling at me in my head.

But Ma…

This is how big the Christmas cookie is:

In this house, they don’t place the cookies on a plate and sit down with a glass of milk like we used to. No! Cookies are grabbed by the handful and tossed back like a bunch of peanuts. It doesn’t matter if the mixer made them tough. It doesn’t matter how they’re decorated. Heck, it barely matters that they’re even cookies!

So, sorry, Ma. I used a mixer. It’s just quicker and I don’t experience pain when I see an afternoon’s worth of baking disappear in less than 10 minutes (allowing three minutes to get the tin open.).

I guess I should have informed Heir 2 of this decision before he did this:

Yes, those are tweezers.

But before everyone gets a soft spot in their hearts for a 14-year-old who would put such care into cookie decorating: Heir 2 found out one of the red decorations actually bled when baked on the cookie. Having instructed me to press a cookiesheetful using the “dog” mold, he is shown here placing “bullet holes” in the cookie sides and I’d rather not discuss his creative use of chocolate jimmies. Fortunately, you can’t hear his evil chuckle.

Heir 2 will not be decorating cookies to take to the kennel club Christmas party.

In other Christmas decorating news: Dirtman and I did indeed go out and buy a tree, lights and ornaments this weekend. Sadly, in view of the fact that everyone else has planned properly for their holiday season, there were no tree toppers available at Tarzhay.

I do not shop at Walmart (and that is a manifesto), so until I can get somewhere else, Heir 1 has thoughtfully loaned us this for the top of our tree:

This is Raziel, a character from one of the Heirs’ video games who had become a regular in Linguini Christmas tableaus. Raziel is a vampire angel who seems to wander around talking to himself quite a bit. He has all kinds of existential dilemmas over the fact that he is an angel, yet still required to fulfill his needs as a vampire. I get the impression that this is somehow supposed to make us feel sorry for him even when he’s sucking people’s blood, but I mostly feel sorry for him because he has no stomach which presents all kinds of physiological questions.

Last year Raziel was “Hark!”ing over the crèche and I’m not certain the shepherds were all that pleased to see who was bringing them glad tidings of great joy. So this year he’ll sit on the tree and, perhaps, solve some of his philosophical and psychic problems.

I choose to see my sons as “creative,” not warped. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.