Rules,

No rolling out the dough, no timers, no waiting for the cookies to bake. 

No frosting, no eggs and no flour. 

Not one rolling pin.

Caution, get ready for sugar to course  through your veins.

Once you're prepared to eat, breathe and smell like sugar, find your ingredients.

One pound of the creamiest peanut butter you can find, but not too creamy. 

About one and ½ pounds of snowy sugar. 

A cup or two of freshly made butter.

Then a speckle of vanilla. 

Once gathered, add all ingredients to your large bowl. Mix with your hands until a soft dough-like consistency forms. Then make into small balls and refrigerate overnight. Once the balls are cool, dip into your chosen chocolate and wait until the chocolate shell has hardened.

Dig in.

This year didn't feel like Christmas. Barely any snow had fallen and all the Christmas movies didn’t feel magical and nostalgic anymore. They just felt fake, like an over used pickup line or the dollar store candy that elementary school teachers gave you. Everything Christmas related reeked of corporate Christmas cards and seasonal depression. 

As you get older, Christmas means less and less. It's no longer the time over the year that's all about presents and Santa Claus, it slowly turns into waiting to see your sister and having to see her leave the next day. Soon all your holidays are about making your dad’s fiancée happy. 

But then, a week before Christmas, the big brown box appeared on my doorstep. It read “To: Jeffrey Beitzel…From: Mary Beitzel, Columbus Ohio”, “if it’s for dad then it's the Christmas box” I thought to myself. I was right, it was a box filled with gifts from grandma. Red wrapping paper for me, white for my sister and silver for dad. As I sifted through the perfectly wrapped gifts and crunchy packing peanuts, I was only looking for one thing. A plastic Christmas plate that inevitably showcased a scene of a happy snowman. As I reached out to grab it my hand was only met with the bottom of the box. I stood up straight and replayed the past few seconds in my head. There was only one answer that I could come up with. My grandmother, Mary Beitzel, did not send Christmas cookies this year. Thinking it was a mistake I turned to my father who was putting the gifts under the tree “There’s no cookies in here.” I told him.

“I guess she didn’t send them this year.” he calmly but disappointingly said. 

I didn’t like that answer, “I guess she didn’t send them this year” that’s all he had to say about it? Whatever. It didn’t feel like Christmas anyway, why not throw another stick into the fire. 

Luckily, I soon learned that they would be there later in the week. 

That Friday, once the post had arrived and the driver left I ran out to retrieve the cookie platter. All I could think about was sinking my teeth into a creamy rich ball of sugar and peanut butter. I ripped open the layers of plastic wrap and saw them. 

The sweet candies of joy. Perfectly mixed,  made up of creamy peanut butter and sugar and butter, it must have been whipped butter she used because nothing had ever tasted better than that one buckeye. That one perfect buckeye held the key to Christmas happiness. Then I knew why Christmas didn’t feel like Christmas. Those sweet chocolate dipped Confections were the reason Christmas was Christmas. They were the reason that so many people were a family. The buckeyes were meant to be made as a family, but I couldn't be there in Ohio with my grandmother so she made those silly little candies and they brought her to me.