What would you do with more than eight dozen sugar cookies in the shapes of Christmas trees, snowmen, holly leaves, candy canes and Christmas stockings? Decorate them, of course! We pulled the student women and their friends together for a festive Saturday afternoon of decorating with icing and sprinkles.
Decorating Christmas cookies is a holiday tradition for some people, but none of the students had ever decorated cookies. Julie and I made a quick training video for them. The video was in jest, but I thought you’d laugh with us!
Our hostess, Kelly, was rather clever about the event, covering her table with a plastic table cloth and setting out paper towels and plastic knives along with the colored icing and sprinkles. Christmas music and Christmas cartoons played in the background all afternoon as we all got to know each other and “ooh”ed and “ahh”ed at each creative design.
One sweet aspect of the day was that the first six dozen were set aside to give to a halfway house for men with mental challenges. It was great to show that Christmas isn’t just about getting, but about giving, too.
And in that spirit of giving, Julie led a short discussion about the individual art of decorating each cookie and made parallels to how God was directly involved in “decorating” us when He knit us together in our mothers’ wombs. She then talked about gifts God has given us, and that December is when we celebrate the greatest and most significant gift of Jesus Christ.
Three hours into our decorating extravaganza, and with plenty more cookies to decorate, some of the student men crashed us, er, rather, they stopped by unannounced and little hungry. We made them work for their eats, and showed them the fine art of slathering sugary confection all over small, sugar cookies.
