Now that Halloween is over, I have had several people ask me what our plans for Christmas are. And that is just not the thing to ask someone who is still more than slightly nauseated by the really disgusting amounts of candy she’s eaten over the weekend, really. But as I was sketching out our plans for the month, I suddenly realized that we don’t have a free weekend again until January.
Welcome to the holiday season!
We were shopping on the weekend and sometime between trick-or-treating and Saturday morning, every store we went into had completely gotten rid of all of the Halloween stock and brought in the Christmas stuff. It was jarring.
I’ve actually done a fair bit to get ready for Christmas so far – I’ve placed an order for my husband’s Christmas presents, found sources for the kids’ Saint Nicholas gifts, and made lists of things I want to bake this season – although the Things I Want To Bake list is sort of an on-going project and not so much a sign of my organizational skills as a sign of my all-consuming cookie gluttony. But I certainly don’t feel Christmasy yet, nor should I, since it’s still nearly two months away. I mean, really.
Do you do Christmas baking? I know lots of women who set aside a whole day to bake dozens and dozens of cookies right at the beginning of the season, which I find sort of… well, icky. Cookies are at their best within the day or so that they’re made – unless you’re making those old style spicy cookies which need to age for a while to really get at their eating peak – and so generally those big batches of Christmas cookies are past their prime by Christmas day. I’m more of a makes ’em when I wants ’em kind of baker, and right now, I pointedly do NOT want any Christmas cookies, thank you. It is November 3rd and I still feel yucky from my Halloween gastronomical overexertions.
I don’t like November much. It’s just a month in-between things, and I generally use it to stock up on my bronchitis for the year. I used to get badly depressed every November without fail, but now I’m too busy online shopping to really notice, so that’s a comfort. And by the end of the month, I probably WILL feel like baking cookies again, even if the idea boggles my still-candy-addled mind more than a little bit right now. Maybe. Or maybe I’ll just sulk on my couch until 2009. We’ll see.
I have two girls with December birthdays. One on the 18 and one on the 22. And my MIL insists on hanukah too. I win the stressful December contest.
This year I have decided that the girls will have a joint birthday party on the 20 and that it will be a cookie baking party. I found a cookie press like my mom had when I was little and we will make different shaped cookies and colored sugar sprinkles and kill three birds with one stone. Well, 4, because the cookies can be tied up in cute bags and taken home as favors too.
I totally with you—I pretty much leave the baking until the last minute, like Dec. 22 or 23, because the cookies taste better warm and fresh.
As for baking early, well, I feel pressured by my kids, the annual bake sale (why do they have to have it in November?) and my husband. So, to appease everyone, I buy cookies from Richmann’s bakery, where they do nut-free baked goods and won’t give you the dirtiest look if you ask for some alterations in favor of allergic reactions. Here’s a list of some other great cookie/bakery places I found on a review site: http://www.sharesavvy.ca/cities/toronto/reviews/242
I know people will judge me for not baking early, but I honestly have no time nor the patience.
Hope this helps!
Christina
I can’t start baking till the end of November at the very earliest. But it’s not so much baking as making doughs that can be frozen in cylinder form, and then sliced and baked a few days before Christmas. There are quite a few doughs that work quite well this way, but I leave the shortbreads and candies till December…
Yeah, I was shocked to see all the Christmas decorations and snacky stuff in the store BEFORE Hallowe’en. Weird. The grocery store personnel were pretty freaked out by it too – said it was a Canada-wide corporate thing. Give us a holiday break, already!
I’ve never understood the baking weeks in advance thing, either. I can’t tell you how many little wrapped trays of cookies we get and they all taste a tad, well, stale.
I LOVE baking holiday cookies and treats, but I do it all in a wild frenzy right before the holiday.
We usually do quite a bit of Christmas baking although last year we slowed down a little because there just wasn’t time. I have a hard time narrowing down what to bake and really, there are only two of us eating most of it so what’s the point in making so much? I do love some good cookies though. Put them in the freezer, Beck! Come Boxing Day they’re good as new…and you’re still too stuffed to notice much anyway.
I love to bake, but I don’t do it very often–it just wears me out, and then I pig out on all the goods and gain 10 lbs! So I do save most of my holiday baking for over one or two days in December. A girlfriend and I get together with our kids and bake all the cookies at once (we usually do the dough ahead of time), then the kids get to decorate them when they’ve cooled. And then we exchange cookies. It’s fun, I have a friend to help with the clean-up, and then we have various assortments of cookies to eat for the next two days! (And yes, I do give away portions of the bakings to neighbors, also.)
Speaking of baking, I was requested to make chocolate chip cookies for a gathering at our neighbor’s this weekend. So, I guess I’ll be baking Friday night or Saturday morning. I’m actually kind of excited about it, and I might even make two batches! You know–to start EARLY on the 10 lb holiday gain!
Suddenly the “Thanksgiving in November” thing isn’t such a bad idea after all… At least we have a holiday to carry us into Christmas…
I bake, but it’s to give away mostly. That’s what a majority of our gifts are: homemade goods to our friends. Or we find some other homemade gift that we want to hand out in addition to our baked goods to our really special friends. That’s always fun. And now the kids are old enough to help and not just make a big mess and leave… which really is a special gift for me. :o)
A stale cookie is a VERY disappointing thing.
I’m with you, eat ’em while I bake ’em. And anyway, with huge platters of cookies laying around I’d have to have company. How can I have company if I’m hiding in my laundry area? It just doesn’t add up.
I do bake quite a bit at Christmas, but I do it piecemeal. I agree with you that if you do it all too early, that the cookies get past their prime, etc. Plus in my house, I would eat them all. I have NO willpower!
I do loads of Christmas baking, but I also freeze most everything right away. It’s remarkably fresh when I retrieve it from it’s frosty home.
November. BUSY! I have two girls with birthdays just five days apart on the 13th and the 18th. And then, throw in our United States Thanksgiving celebration, and voila! the month is full!
I usually do my baking on the 21st and 22nd and have them all handed out by Christmas Eve. I don’t like stale cookies :-p
I love Thanksgiving. It is so much fun to lounge around and eat all day and talk and watch parades and be fat and lazy… unless you are the hostess of course. I miss the days of going to Grandma’s and offering to help only to be shuffled back to the living room with a fresh homemade dinner roll… a promise of things to come it was.
Maybe you don’t celebrate thanksgiving in Canada? All the stores skip it here too. Down with Halloween and up with Christmas. Bah Humbug!
I’ll tell you what you need to do. You need to celebrate the U.S. Thanksgiving! I can’t even think Christmas yet, not until we get through the turkey day festivities, still three weeks away.
I love to bake. But I also bake ’em as I want ’em and use up what I make within a couple of days. I think it’s better that way too!
I’m more of an imaginary baker…full days of baking, alas, do not fit in well with my full-time job. I usually cram in a small fit of baking closer to Christmas, but it’s pretty minimal at that. And I’m with you: I don’t even want to think about any of it yet. Ugh.
I kinda like November, though. It’s my birthday month, so I guess I’ve always looked for redeeming qualities in it. One example: noticing just how many shades of brown there are in the landscape. It’s lovely in a very understated kind of way.
You know you’re going to bake cookies, as hard as it is to imagine right now.
I am not anywhere close to being ready for Christmas food or decorations, though I too am already buying and planning to buy presents (makes it easier on the budget).
You know I bake early. Then it all goes, in separate bins, into cold storage in the garage or cellar, so it keeps pretty well. Unless Pynchon finds it. Then I have to rebake. Remember last year when my sister and I used up 6 pounds of butter baking in one day? Late November. That’s when I start.
Also, I will be keeping Munchkin out of the mall / the grocery store / the starbucks for the next three or four weeks. Her little brain can’t take so much Xmas so soon. It’s too much. It’s mean.
I bake and we eat it and then I bake again. Works great. And, ugh, Christmas is a long ways off still. I’m glad too. And I hope November is fun! I have high hopes for it.
We did see a Christmas tree at the mall Saturday! I always have high hopes for baking and then I am lucky if I can get my shortbread done in time. I usually bake ahead…I am not sure why I can’t bake as I go, but truly I can’t seem to manage it.
We did see a Christmas tree at the mall Saturday! I always have high hopes for baking and then I am lucky if I can get my shortbread done in time. I usually bake ahead…I am not sure why I can’t bake as I go, but truly I can’t seem to manage it.
No WAY!
I am NOT in the Christmas mood yet. I heard Christmas music on the radio on HALLOWEEN and it made me angry. AHHHH!!!
I do like November simply because it contains Thanksgiving. A holiday in which I can eat as much as humanly possible and don’t have the pressure of presents to contend with. Yippee!
I think the lack of fun in November is why the stores go from Halloween to Christmas in half a blink…that and the whole greedy capitalism thing. 😉
I used to bake for Christmas but it’s kind of pointless now as both my sister and my MIL bake SO many cookies that mine are unnecessary .
So I wrap presents instead. By that I mean that while my sister is baking cookies (a task she is eminently more suited to than I) I wrap her presents for her family so she doesn’t have to worry about it. Works for us.
Yes I agree. November is not a fun month in the least and oh so depressing. Its just…dead really. And cookies MUST be eaten within 3 days max of making (although I really don’t think they have ever lasted 3 days in our house…). I do Christmas baking yes but not all at once. Its so much more fun to do it over the course of the month with Christmas music in the background. Now you have me longing for December.
November was never fun, then I got married in November to brighten it up a little 🙂
I’m definitely a makes-em as I wants-em kind of girl as well. I agree about not getting the idea of baking cookies way in advance. Yuck.
I’m also on sweets overload. That was fast this year. Usually it takes a few more days.
I love Thanksgiving, so I like Nov. for that, but you don’t have that in Nov., so I can understand not liking it very much. I hope you don’t get down.
I love, love, love online shopping. So much easier!
I make exactly one dozen Christmas cookies every year, just so the Tongginator has the baking experience. I make no more than that. Why? Because my momma Tonggu Grammy is a teacher… hello dozens and dozens of Christmas cookies from all of her students. We gain enough weight as it is…
Christmastime is when Scott takes a break from his usual bread baking/meat roasting-type cooking and makes cookies–holiday varieties that I don’t make the rest of the year. Mmmmm… Russian Tea Cakes.
I make the same standards with slight variation year-in, year-out: peanut butter fudge, shortbread, jam shortbread, butter tarts and some kind of square with tons of nuts and sweetened condensed milk. I spread the baking out a bit but I give most of it away on gift trays so most of it has to be made in advance. I freeze huge quantities to keep things fresh throughout December.
I like November. It’s the calm before the storm. What I don’t like is how busy the blogosphere gets in November. It makes me feel like I’m drowning.
I make lists of things I want to bake too. I’m refining my list every year so that I make things that keep well, taste good and look pretty on a tray. Most of my baking is done in the last week or so before school ends. I usually take trays of goodies to friends and neighbours as well as some to the school for the teachers.