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Varina Denman | Unexpectedly Sweet Christmas Memories
Author Guest / December 18, 2015

When I walked down the aisle and said “I do,” I married into the Christmas tradition of making roll-out cookies for Santa. My husband’s family has a to-die-for recipe that produces cookies with a tea cake texture that melts in your mouth. The secret ingredient is sour cream which makes them not too sweet … just right. And nobody can eat just one. We’ve baked cookies almost every December since then, but my favorite memory is from Christmas 1999 … even though the evening did NOT start off well. At the time, I was suffering from a lingering case of post-partum depression, and I felt anything but jolly. I sat by the Christmas tree and watched the twinkle lights as I held my two-month-old daughter and tried to think happy thoughts. My husband and three older children were making cookies in the adjacent kitchen where they were up to their elbows in flour. I knew how this would end; I’d seen it before. Waxed paper would be cemented to the counters, bits of dried dough would be sprinkled like gravel on every horizontal surface of the room, and tiny drops of red and green food coloring (invisible to the naked…