Growing up it just wasn’t Christmas without spending Christmas Eve at Aunt Hazel and Aunt Janet’s house. "Aunt" Hazel was really my mother’s step-mother and Janet was her sister. They lived in an apartment not far from our house. Every Christmas Eve our whole family, Mom, Dad, my four brothers and I, would spend the evening at their house drinking hot chocolate and eating Christmas cookies. But as idyllic as this scene sounds, danger was lurking.

It was those Christmas cookies. I was raised to be very practical. That means a cookie is all about taste. The essential characteristic that determines a cookie’s worth is its taste. Looks mean nothing. But, caught up in the decorative mood of the Christmas season, Aunts Hazel and Janet would leave off from baking the good cookies and produce little works of art that sparkled with Christmas tradition. Although they were wonderful to behold, these cookies left a lot to be desired in the taste department. Some will disagree with me about Christmas cookies, but I don’t care for all the frills. Red and green sparkles and cute gingerbread man shapes do not enhance "cookieness." Just give me a good old chocolate chip cookie any day. It might even make a good commercial, two boys debating over the merits of a chocolate chip cookie: "Great taste!" "Less frilly!"

Thankfully, by God’s grace, there would always be a few chocolate chip cookies among the glitzy assortment. My brothers and I would scan that tray of cookies hoping to beat each other to snatching those chocolate chip gems. But there was yet another cruel joke--raisin cookies. Now I have nothing against raisins. They are great in their proper place. I like raisins in salads, as a snack straight from the box, or even in oatmeal cookies. But my aunts would make cookies that were like chocolate chip cookies in every way except for the substitution of raisins for the chocolate chips. This is not a good combination. Imagine my dismay when, after spotting what looked like a chocolate chip cookie and beating my brothers to claiming this prize, I bit into it and tasted the juice of a raisin rather than the sweetness of chocolate.