National Cookie Exchange Day, on December 22, arrived quietly this year—and with it, something far sweeter than a plate of treats.
Yesterday, my brother shared a recipe with me. Not just any recipe, but one he created years ago as a way of honoring our mother, who passed long ago. Food has a way of holding memory differently than words do. A recipe can become a bridge—between generations, between absence and presence, between who we were and who we are now.
As I read through his notes, I could feel that familiar layering of love and loss. This wasn’t about perfection or tradition in the glossy-magazine sense. It was about remembrance. About continuity. About finding a way to keep someone close without needing to say their name out loud.
I’m adapting the recipe to fit my current health needs—adjusting ingredients, softening edges, listening carefully to what my body can hold right now. In a way, that feels aligned with the spirit of the recipe itself. Adaptation is honoring. It says: this mattered then, and it still matters now, even if it looks different.
And maybe that’s the quiet lesson National Cookie Exchange Day offered me this year.
Christmas—and the whole holiday season—doesn’t always fit neatly. For many people, it never has. Grief changes the shape of celebrations. Illness changes the pace. Finances change the scope. Family structures change the script. There are so many reasons someone might feel like they don’t quite fit the mold this time of year.
But joy doesn’t require perfection. It doesn’t always arrive wrapped, planned, or scheduled.
Sometimes it shows up as a message from a sibling.
Perhaps it’s a recipe passed hand to hand across time.
Other times it’s the simple realization that you’re allowed to adapt—traditions, expectations, even holidays themselves—so they fit the life you’re actually living.
Joy, I’m learning, doesn’t demand that we perform it.
It just asks that we notice when it finds us.
Today, it found me in a recipe.
And that feels like enough. 🍪
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