My Christmas Confession

My name is Emily and I’m an addict.

While I’ve never uttered that confession in the circular sanctity of a meeting, I do have a problem. A December problem. With gingerbread.

Such an admission may sound cavalier or insensitive to those with more “malignant” compulsions, but I assure you, I mean no disrespect. I empathize.

I’m a professional woman in my 40s, devoted mother, nature-seeker, avid reader, and functioning adult capable of passing the marshmallow test and yet, I am weak. In the presence of cookie kryptonite, I go limp—turn into a powerless, hamstrung, utterly impuissant human. After Thanksgiving, the mere waft of ginger morphs me into a lily-livered invertebrate. The chewy ones render me a toddler. Smear on a dollop of icing, a dash of sprinkles, and I’m a goldfish—liable to self-combust.

The genesis of my addiction bloomed in my twenties while baking holiday treats for friends. With a grandmother who won the Chicago Tribune’s Holiday Cookie Contest—infamous for her fairy-tale platters of sugar-dusted Czech confections—I figured I possessed the genes to pull off my own pastry prowess. I craved gingerbread and believed that a supreme recipe was out there, if only I could whittle away at the misses and hone my successes like a potter at her sculpting wheel.

With scientific precision, I tested, sampled, and rejected, scouring cookbooks and newspapers, even tearing recipes from dental office magazines whenever receptionists’ heads were turned. Until at long last—a winner: A recipe in the 2002 holiday issue of Cooking Light that yielded men so malleable and moist, so springy and supple, that I was ready to crouch down on bended knee.

Over the years, I’ve tweaked the formula, attempting to counter my overindulgence by making the dough healthier—substituting coconut sugar for granulated or applesauce for butter. Oh, how tempting it is to try and change our lovers. At times, I took it too far and the results were as nauseating as compromising one’s morals. You can put lipstick on a pig, but in the end, a cookie is a cookie. The ratio is perfect now though. And I clone my men like beloved pets before every winter solstice. Tripling, often quadrupling the recipe.

The leaves fall. The mums freeze over. November gratitude comes and goes in a blur of leftovers, 4pm sunsets, aggrandized football games, and tryptophan naps. I get antsy. My palms sweat. My mouth salivates, craving what I’ve been awaiting all year. The spicy fragrance of ginger. The warm heat of crushed clove. The slow decadence of molasses building up to the climax: nips of nutmeg melding with cinnamon sweet.

When you think about it, gingerbread gets one lousy shot. One month of public approval. King cakes claim February, pumpkin pies rule November and still, we gingerbread aficionados have to share the holiday spotlight with all those peppermint zealots. It doesn’t seem fair.

All in all, it’s a two-day process to mold my men. Day one is about preparation, measuring the ingredients and justifying all that middle-school math to calculate 1 ¾ tsp x 4. I mix the dough in a bowl the size of a sorceress’s cauldron and then separate it into parcels of parchment. Overnight, the logs refrigerate, germinating flavor and preparing for self-sacrifice. On day two, I recruit the kids so they can’t whine to their therapists in twenty years that they were denied rose-hued, holiday traditions. The oven is pre-heated. The cookie sheets are prepped. The counters are cleaned and dusted with flour. Rolling the dough to the proper thickness is key. Too thin equals burned and brittle. Too thick and I don’t get the quantity to sustain me through another year.

In truth, the kids are fairly decent at wielding the cutouts and predictably overindulgent with the sprinkles, but their stamina is lousy. You can’t lose steam after two dozen cookies! True devotees are committed to Tupperware storage. Because as soon as that aroma hits you in the nose—that enticing, delectable culmination of spice, flavor, fullness, and home—you are energized, brought back to life like Jason Bourne in a sensationalized action film.

Once the cookies cool, a thin smear of icing seals the deal. Think Vegemite—a little goes a long way. And then . . . that first bite. Cosmic. Euphoric. The softest give against your front teeth. The chew. The mouthfeel. The ebullient explosion of flavors. Sweet. Earthy. Piquant. Zing.

My girls like to tease that I stink at sharing. And, in this case, it’s true. Which is why I bake other varieties to give away—to prove my altruism and extensive culinary repertoire. Peanut butter kisses, oatmeal butterscotch, almond meringues, raspberry squares. Sometimes, I even toss in some powder-sugared Chex Mix in the nooks and crannies of my neighborly platters, but I don’t share the gingerbread. Like a proper addict, I even conceal them from my kids.

These days, I shape both men and women and if I had a non-binary cut-out, I’d roll those too. I make stars and bells, donkeys and houses, angels and evergreens. I rationalize eating six bells at once because they pretty much add up to one house. But that’s where my justification tends to get sloppy. While my adorned creations repose on wire racks, my self-restraint hightails out the kitchen window like a spastic housefly.

I’ve never been one to binge an entire pint of ice cream or sleeve of Oreos or bag of Cool Ranch Doritos. Even after a book-club gummy. I am the epitome of discipline—a disciple of portion control—except around these f’ing cookies.

I hoard them, devour them, go back to them time and time again like a disrespecting lover. A slot-machine. A handle of tequila. I’ve been known to hide them, move them to another floor, bury them under dish towels like I’m playing peek-a-boo with my Freudian id. I burp those Tupperware more than a lactose-intolerant baby, devouring a cookie for breakfast, snacking on several after lunch, and then putting a serious dent in stock after sundown.

The initial bite is always the best—the flavor bomb to the tongue, the song to the saliva. And you chase that feeling like a rainbow. Like an elusive dream. Like unrequited love.

Every December, I lose all self-respect and yet, I am gluttonously giddy. While the cookies last.

Someone asked me once what three things I would save in a fire. My kids’ baby books, of course, because I’m not a monster. My box of hand-written letters. And that cookbook with a bundle of asparagus on the cover. Because way in the back, in the dessert section, there is a wrinkled page, greased and smudged, with a recipe that I can only make once a year.

A cookie that is both my cross and my comfort. My forte and my failing. My torture and my tradition.