Every Christmas Counts




Growing up making sugar cookies was a Christmas tradition in my family. I don’t know how it got started. But what I do know was my mom’s sugar cookies were the best!

With my sister years ago...

Then my mom passed away and somehow the tradition of sitting around the kitchen table frosting and sprinkling colored sugar on the cookies my mom made was no more. I really didn’t take noticed until Christmas Eve this year as my husband and I worked in the kitchen making sugar cookies. I made the dough the previous day and we just had to cut out the cookies, bake and decorate them.

Traditionally my mom had various cookie cutter shapes for Christmas; candy cane, bells, stars, Christmas trees, etc… but for us, we haven’t accumulated such things yet, so out cookies were cut out using a plastic cup. But my husband and I sat at our kitchen table and we frosted them and sprinkled colored sugar on them. I hope next year my twins will be up there with us sprinkling colored sugar on the frosted sugar cookies.

Now, as I was making these cookies I realized the last time I had sugar cookies at Christmas was my last Christmas with my mom back in 2007. It wasn’t just that the cookie making tradition stopped, but the traditional cookies seemed to have stopped when my mom wasn’t around anymore.

My nephew when he was little



 I don’t wish to sound sad at the happiest time of the year and I don’t wish to be pitied either. But thinking about my mom I realized that you never know when your last Christmas with a family member will be. Sure I will see my mom again, like every Christian I believe I will see all my loved ones again. But our time in this mortal life is so short and goes by in a blink of an eye and our world can change so easily that making the most of each moment and each holiday really matters.



This was my children’s first Christmas. I’ll never get that again. I’ll never have another Christmas where my husband and I were parents for the first time. There may not have been a lot under our tree this year. My kids won’t remember this Christmas, but I will.



My sister helping my dad

When it’s my turn to go home to heaven I want my mind to be full of loud, full Christmases, full of family, full of children anxiously waiting by the Christmas tree since 5am waiting to open their presents from Santa Claus.
I want holidays thick with family tradition and full of family and love. I want every year to have people around my kitchen table decorating sugar cookies because I’ve realized every Christmas counts in my book and I don’t want to have any regrets on any of them.

What is Christmas all about?

This has been my fourth Christmas without snow. Many people I am sure don't care. Many have never had a white Christmas or don't care about a white Christmas. It's just I've had almost 20 white Christmases, snow is almost a tradition for me.
It has been tradition to go to my mom's cousin's cookie party. Tradition to drive around and look at Christmas lights strung beautifully on houses and at the local zoo. There is pumpkin roll and sugar cookies and putting up the tree with all our Christmas ornaments given to us through the years. I loved listening to Kenny G after the tree was put up, the living room lights turned off and the Christmas tree is the only source of light. It's shining like the stars at night, reminding me of the star that led the Wise Men to the baby Christ. Christmas Eve spent at my grandparents eating food, telling the kids to stop being so crazy or fighting, and laughing till our sides are sore, then we go home and go to bed exhausted.
Christmas morning we open presents in our pajamas, eat cookies and milk for breakfast. The living room is a mess, toys everywhere. Snow is covering everything outside. It's cold, sometimes freezing some years, but we are warm inside the house. The spirit of Christmas could be felt from Thanksgiving until the new year when the tree comes down.
For the past few years Christmas hasn't been the same. Family move, people move on, I am in places without family and snow. I am the one making the pumpkin rolls, no cookie parties anymore.
Last year I was on my mission during Christmas. I was without family, but I still felt the Christmas spirit. I talked about my Savior, taught about him to people who did not know of him. That is all what my Christmas was about. It wasn't about presents, decorations, Christmas TV specials. It was about the original meaning of Christmas.
This year was away from home once again, but not away with family. Yet, it still didn't feel the same. There wasn't many Christmas traditions I got to do. I didn't decorate a tree, make cookies or even a pumpkin roll. We didn't drive around looking at lights. Christmas Eve was spent at a casino theatre watching a musical and a very expensive restaurant with the smell of smoke everywhere. We did find some snow earlier that day, but had to drive a good distance in the mountains to find it and we went sledding for a bit. But I still miss looking out the window of where I am staying and not seeing white, but rocks instead.
What brought some of the feeling of Christmas back some was a phone call and long conversation with some one not near in location but very dear to me. We talked about Christmas memories and our ideas of what Christmas is to us. Night of Christmas we began to read in the Book of Luke in the New Testament, THE Christmas Story. We didn't finish reading the story because we got lost in discussion about some of the wording in the verses.
Bringing me into the scriptures and talking about "The First Noel" brought back Christmas.