I took my gluten-free cookies out of the oven and placed them aside to cool. Josh then put his regular cookies into the oven and allowed them to bake for approximately seven minutes.
Once all of the cookies had cooled, we sat down for the fun part—decorating! We covered our cookies in vanilla icing and then used the sprinkles and colored gels to draw faces on the Santa Claus-shaped cookies, stripes on the candy cane-shaped cookies, ornaments on the Christmas tree-shaped cookies, buttons on the snowmen-shaped cookies, and anything else Christmas-themed that we could think of!
Absolutely! In fact, there are a few distinct ways we believe these cookies are connected to our environment. The first is obvious in the fact that these cookies—because of their shapes, colors, and gift-giving purposes—are very specific to Christmas holiday traditions in America. But going a bit further, one can see that these cookies are also representative of how the Christmas holiday has evolved in our country over time. As our society has continued to modernize, it seems that many of our traditions are no longer as deeply rooted in religion as they once were.
For example, Santa Claus, reindeers, trees, snowflakes, presents, cookies, candy canes, and red-and-green color combinations all seem to represent the Christmas holiday today. Yet, individually, none of these items bear much religious symbolism or significance. For Josh and I, there is nothing especially religious about baking and decorating Christmas cookies.
