Cookie Meditation

A Holiday Plea

I just witnessed the saddest cookie I have ever seen. Or cookie “kit,” I should say, as if that is a thing.

A cookie kit is, apparently, a set of precooked cookies sold in a plastic clamshell along side a few decorating items. A new breakthrough product for that perfect moment when you find yourself wanting to decorate cookies without the act of actually making cookies, eliminating the pesky chore of mixing ingredients, figuring out what shapes to cut the dough and the colors to decorate.

What is so sad about that? You ask. Why be so harsh about a dang cookie kit?

Let me start here, with the ambiguity of it all. The sort of pumpkin, but maybe it’s a turkey blob shape. The cheap, undercooked sugar cookie, packaged together with the least inspiring palate of colors and decorations imaginable. A maximally processed product for the most minimal of creative possibilities.

It makes my heart sink for the person who, perhaps without thinking it through, grabbed the kit from where it sat prominently displayed in the front of the Walmart store. “Yeah, this might be fun,” the innocent shopper thought to themselves before wheeling the cart on to the next item. “I could decorate cookies with the kids without the mess of making cookies.”

Maybe hard(er) economic times prevail in the household and so they chose the cheapest of the kits, this one with the dough blobs and limited color scheme, in a store full of bargains no one can resist. Walmart, the place we go to save money and then overload the cart with unnecessary items—like cookie kits—adding tens, if not hundreds, of dollars to every bill.

Upon arriving home, the cookies emerge from the bag and kids are called to the table, the advent of such a homey activity initially exciting and warming your heart. “Kids!” you call out, “Let’s decorate cookies!”

Small feet race to the table with the mention of the (kid-friendly) C-word. And it is there and then when the fun you envisioned ends.

“What’s it supposed to be? A pumpkin? It doesn’t look like a pumpkin!” the defiant, middle child’s questions, wearing down your excitement right from the get-go. Suddenly you realize the toddler has somehow opened and unloaded the orange tube of frosting onto the rug and is bawling her eyes out at the loss. The eldest, trying to be helpful, ripped into the too-thin plastic bag of sprinkles in an explosion, the sugar bits flying across the table. Then a scant two minutes later, after eating an undecorated cookie with agonizing boredom dripping from her every pore, the middle-one announces, “Dad’s cookies are better,” and marches back to the couch, their eyes again glued to that movie they’ve watched 100 times.

Or perhaps I am just too negative. Maybe it goes amazingly well and (in the best case scenario) the family spent a grand total of five minutes together decorating, unplugged from phones and screens. The mess would still be significant, the plastic and broken cookies now in the trash bin.

But still, why is a decorated holiday “cookie”—once an art form, a symbol of affection and caring—now something concocted into a “kit,” picked up absentmindedly while pushing a cart through the vacuous isles of Walmart? Isn’t anything sacred?

And why would this product—any product—need to have so many (oh so many!) ingredients? So many preservatives? So many different dyes?

Any left over or forgotten cookies do not need to survive in the back of the pantry for eternity, or, for heaven’s sake, travel undigested through an unassuming child’s bowels (and yet later, float into our water table). A cookie should be a perishable item, created and eaten and digested all within moments of its arrival on Earth. A cookie—by definition—should not be preserved until the next millennium.

But ultimately it is this that saddens me, that this uninspiring blob form hints at creativity, yet chips away at our ability to think and act for ourselves. The cookie kit is a soul-sucking product, designed to dumb us down, to convince us we have no time, no energy, no creativity of our own, to engage in the not-so-difficult act of making a holiday cookie from scratch and sharing it with those we love.

So I say to this cookie kit and the other “Buy! Buy! Buy!” holiday/Christmas items out there that are wholly (holy?) unnecessary, unwarranted, and unneeded in this world—away with you!

Let us instead aspire to be inspired. Let us create—even if it takes time or energy to do so—because it is good for the soul. Let us spend not a scant few minutes with our kids as they glob a pre-concocted orange tube of frosting onto an undercooked shape of unknown reference, but instead endeavor to do things this season like craft actual cookies. Let’s endow our families with nuggets of deliciousness artfully created with our own hands, revered and appreciated for the hard work and special ingredients found within.

This holiday season, let’s not half-ass life in exchange for quick consumer fixes—even when a company executive has made it easy to do so; in buying less we often actually give more. We can bake all of life’s cookies to the fullest, using our grandmother’s cookie cutters (what is more satisfying than using a cookie cutter?) or grandpa’s recipe to create something special, unique.

Then we can fill our creations with life’s gems—the stories and love that give us joy—and bake the treasures until golden brown, with decorations that come from the heart. A cookie—without the “kit;” a treat to behold.

---

Special for paid subscribers to any of our blogs…

There are two great events coming up for paid subscribers to any Iowa Writers Collaborative newsletters. On Friday, November 24, starting at noon Central, we are holding a Zoom call with Iowa writer Ellen Won Steil, author of the suspense novel Fortune. The book is an Amazon Editors’ pick for Best Mystery, Thriller & Suspense. If you’re looking for a good lunchtime conversation to go with your Thanksgiving leftovers, please join us this Friday.

We are also having an in-person holiday gathering on Thursday, December 7 at the Witmer House in Des Moines, 2900 Grand Avenue, from 5:00 to 6:30 pm. Click here for the registration form, if you are a paid subscriber.

---

You can subscribe only to the main page of the Iowa Writers Collaborative and get your “Sunday Paper” with all of our writing for the week in one handy email. Or subscribe to one or more of the writers below.

Nicole Baart: This Stays Here, Sioux Center

Ray Young Bear: From Red Earth Drive, Meskwaki Settlement

Laura Belin: Iowa Politics with Laura Belin, Windsor Heights

Doug Burns: The Iowa Mercury, Carroll

Dave Busiek: Dave Busiek on Media, Des Moines

Iowa Writers’ Collaborative, Roundup

Steph Copley: It Was Never a Dress, Johnston

Art Cullen: Art Cullen’s Notebook, Storm Lake

Suzanna de Baca: Dispatches from the Heartland, Huxley

Debra Engle: A Whole New World, Madison County

Arnold Garson: Second Thoughts, Okoboji and Sioux Falls

Julie Gammack: Julie Gammack’s Iowa Potluck, Des Moines and Okoboji

Joe Geha: Fern and Joe, Ames

Jody Gifford: Benign Inspiration, West Des Moines

Rob Gray: Rob Gray’s Area, Ankeny

Nik Heftman: The Seven Times, Los Angeles and Iowa

Beth Hoffman: In the Dirt, Lovilia

Chris Jones, Chris’s Substack, Des Moines

Pat Kinney: View from Cedar Valley, Waterloo

Fern Kupfer: Fern and Joe, Ames

Robert Leonard: Deep Midwest: Politics and Culture, Bussey

Letters from Iowans, Iowa

Darcy Maulsby: Keepin’ It Rural, Calhoun County

Tar Macias: Hola Iowa, Iowa

Alison McGaughey, The Inquisitive Quad Citizen, Quad Cities

Kurt Meyer: Showing Up, St. Ansgar

Wini Moranville: Wini’s Food Stories, Des Moines

Jeff Morrison: Between Two Rivers, Cedar Rapids

Kyle Munson: Kyle Munson’s Main Street, Des Moines

Jane Nguyen: The Asian Iowan, West Des Moines

John Naughton: My Life, in Color, Des Moines

Chuck Offenburger: Iowa Boy Chuck Offenburger, Jefferson and Des Moines

Barry Piatt: Piatt on Politics Behind the Curtain, Washington, D.C.

Dave Price: Dave Price’s Perspective, Des Moines

Macey Shofroth: The Midwest Creative, Norwalk

Larry Stone: Listening to the Land, Elkader

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Buggy Land, Kalona

Mary Swander: Mary Swander’s Emerging Voices, Kalona

Cheryl Tevis: Unfinished Business, Boone County

Ed Tibbetts: Along the Mississippi, Davenport

Kali White VanBaale, 988: Mental Healthcare in Iowa, Bondurant

Teresa Zilk: Talking Good, Des Moines

The Iowa Writers Collaborative is also proud to ally with Iowa Capital Dispatch.