The house and windows are decorated, the christmas stockings are on the wall and the first presents are about to be wrapped. I love the festive atmosphere of the Holiday Season – the flavor of freshly baked cookies, the scent of mistletoe, and the childrens’ excitement in the house.
Our kitchen turns into a Christmas bakery. In that vein, here is a Christmas cookie recipe which we traditionally like to bake with the entire family.
The children especially enjoy this recipe, because everyone can take part – from cutting out cookies to decorating them.
Christmas Cookies with sugar icing
250 g soft butter
250 g sugar
2 eggs
500 g flour
½ pack baking soda
powdered sugar, lemon juice, sugar sprinkles for the icing
Mix butter, sugar and 2 eggs with a mixer. Slowly add the flour and the baking soda. Cool the batter until it can be easily rolled out.
Roll out the batter with a bit of flour, cut out the cookies and bake the cookies 5-8 minutes at 200 degrees Celsius until the edges are slightly brown.
Mix the sieved powdered sugar with a bit of lemon juice until the icing becomes thick and apply it to the cooled cookies with a brush. Add sprinkles or nuts or alternatively jam or melted chocolate.
There are a lot of interesting similarities and small differences between the ways that Christmas is celebrated in Las Vegas and Europe . First, in both the U.S. and Germany, Advent calendars are a common tradition. In Germany Christmas is actually celebrated on the evening of the 24th of December, whereas Americans celebrate Christmas on the morning of the 25th. By the way, there is a Santa Claus celebration on the 6th of December, where children place their shoes outside the house waiting for them to be filled with candy the next morning, but this is a little known tradition in the States which one might nonetheless see in heavily European influenced neighborhoods.
One of the really wonderful parts of the season is the tradition of charitable giving. Many schools support charitable foundations during the holiday season and by doing that they are raising the students’ awareness for people and children in need in their community. Our children have decided to donate to children in less fortunate situations this year. They will use their own allowance to buy presents for a few children with less good fortune in their lives.
In connection with my foundation Children for Tomorrow the holiday season has led us to send a wish list (pdf) on behalf of the children of Uganda to our sponsors
We hope to create spaces, namely traditional round huts painted with many colors and furnished for the needs of kids, to enable them to talk about their traumatic experiences of war and violence.
Whether it’s Christmas in the USA or Western Europe, orthodox Christmas on January 7th, the Jewish Hannukah or whatever holiday you are celebrating, I wish you all a very relaxing and happy time with your family and friends.
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