Keep the SOL in Solstice!
Happy Solstice, everybody! As we all know, all life, love, and all things good come from our all-powerful lord, the Sun! While you are tipping back a few and enduring your relatives this year, don’t forget the real reason for the season: long nights and short days. Let’s keep the Sol in Solstice!
However, many different religions exist that follow the sun, most of them sadly neglected, and all slightly different. At Solstice time, we know that our worship is an essential part of bringing the sun back to life and therefore ending winter, but we aren’t sure exactly how that works. So, we celebrate the death and rebirth of the sun joyously, but with some confusion. And with cookies. Because we aren’t sure exactly what we’re supposed to do. With the recent dominance of non-sun-based religions, the world may even be at risk of sinking into endless winter. But that hasn’t happened yet, so I suggest we deal with an even more important issue.
Holiday cookies: what gives?
Yes, it is true that simpler cookies remain good throughout the holiday season. Brownies are still choclatey, sugar cookies are still sugarey, and so on.
But there is also this obsession with spicy cookies. Too many otherwise great cookies are ruined by the addition of mint or strange eggy flavors. Cheap colored sprinkles can transform a great butter cookie into a mediocre one. Nuts and spices can turn your brownie into a brownie…with nuts. Way to ruin a perfectly good brownie.
It is too much trouble to drop individual cookies onto a sheet, so some people make bars. They’re sort of vaguely like cookies, except without the shape or texture. To make the bar decision seem intentional, there may be some cheap frosting spread on the top.
And, finally, there is pumpkin. Pumpkin is a squash. If you say you like pumpkin cookies, what you are really saying is that you like cinnamon cake cookies. The simple truth is that squash-based cookies or cakes taste like whatever you put in them to cover the flavor of squash. It’s not necessarily a bad flavor, it’s just not pumpkin flavored. OK?
