About a Christmas tradition that began in 1983.
It was one afternoon in November 1983 when a tradition began that marks the beginning of Advent for my mother and me to this day. I sat on the floor under the kitchen table with a lump of butter cookie dough, kneaded, pressed flat, stabbed something, cracked everything back together and finally happily slapped a grayish lump of sticky dough on a baking sheet. To this day, my mother assures me that she actually baked my first cookie – and threw it in the rubbish bin after I went to bed.
Fortunately, this fate no longer threatens our Christmas cookies today. We have been spending a day in the Christmas bakery in mid-November for 38 years now. The date is always around the day of penance and prayer, which was a public holiday in my childhood.
Christmas rituals
For some it is the goose on Christmas Eve, for others it has to be “Three Nuts for Cinderella” in the afternoon program. We all have certain stories, films or rituals that belong to Christmas – and without which our Advent season would only be half as festive. This year you will not only find the popular personal stories in the FR advent calendar, but also raffles every now and then. Good luck and in any case: Happy Holidays! FR
The baking day was only canceled when I was doing my practical semester in Prague – and last year when the risk of sitting together for nine hours in a small kitchen during the pandemic suddenly seemed too big and I only saw my parents outside for months. But in 2020 at least one type of biscuit was baked together – butter cookies based on the original recipe from 1983, which my mother now cut out as grandma with her grandchildren on our terrace.
This year the two of us juggled five baking trays for hours, processed kilos of butter, sugar, flour and nuts and talked. With the monotonous roll of Bethmännchen and patiently spreading cinnamon stars, the hectic everyday life is sometimes very far away, then it is time to exchange ideas. About the unimportant and important, about old and new, about experiences and opinions. These conversations between flour dust and the smell of chocolate are what make Christmas baking my most important Advent ritual. And of course the joy that our cookies give every year.
Carefully packed in small bags, they are distributed to family, friends, neighbors, colleagues and the postman. Parcels go to Berlin and Bielefeld, by autumn at the latest, friends drop more or less discreet hints: “So if you bake again … The cookies are all great, but we fought over the rascals last year,” it says then and of course this year a few more of this variety will end up in the bag. Bethmännchen were very popular with almond fans for years, but now they are facing strong competition from marzipan clouds.
We have our classics, but try a new variety every year. Most of the time, an old one is left out – but that can lead to trouble. My father insists on mini nut wedges, my best friend on cinnamon rolls, the son on nougat bells, the man needs his shortbread cookies, the daughter is a rascal fan and we bakers ourselves? My mother loves the simple hazelnut cookies that my grandmother used to bake them. For me there is no Advent season without butter cookies, after all, everything started with them back then.
