Vintage Sunday: Christmas Cookie Cutters

When I was growing up, Christmas time was cookie time. My mom would spend about two weeks prior to the holiday baking up a storm - everything from sugar cookies to Russian tea cakes (or, as she called them, "butterballs.") Our favorites were her sugar cookies; she had a huge variety of cutters she used to use for them, some of them the old Mirro aluminum cutters you can still find at flea markets and rummage sales, and some of them made of red or green plastic.

As time went on some of the cookie cutters got lost, some got broken, and some she sold off at tag sales of her own as we grew up, moved out, and gave her less of a reason for baking sugar cookies. I was always nostalgic for those cool plastic cookie cutters, though, and the great shapes that they would make - a wrapped Christmas present, two different Santa Claus figures, reindeer and so on - and I was thrilled when I found a complete set of them in really great shape - and in the original (well-used and slightly stained) box!

Made in the 1950's by HRM Educational Products of New York City, these red plastic cutters have withstood time and use pretty well. Some of them have some stress lines in them, but there are no cracks or splits and I drag them out every year for at least a couple of batches of cookies for old times sake.

After all, there's nothing like sugar cookies and a mug of hot cocoa on a cold December evening.

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