Christmas Cookies

Every year since My Beloved and I got married, we have received these little, light cookies from North Carolina, Mrs. Hanes' Moravian cookies. My Beloved's high school and lifelong buddy, Ed and his wife Wanda, always send these at Christmas from their home around Chapel Hill.  There is always a big red can full of crisply wrapped stacks of about a dozen cookies at a time. I await their arrival with glee.


To unwrap one of the packages is to define anticipation.  The paper protests with rustlings but yields to gentle fingers, releasing the fresh smell of vanilla.  They are as simple as it is possible to be, and yet very special in their simplicity.  No icing, no nuts, no extras, just simple vanilla sugar cookies, as thin as a whisper, crisp as a wafer and as light as a cloud.


The pristinely white crinkly paper is folded under to cushion the delicate cookies but they are so thin and crisp that almost inevitably some are broken.  With a cup of tea or coffee or even a glass of milk, these are cookie heaven.  My heart would be broken if Ed and Wanda ever stopped sending them.