How I learned the meaning of Czech Christmas through intoxicating and delicious pastries

By Casey Glynn

It’s like looking at a treasure chest full of priceless jewels.

If you could eat jewels.

Each jewel is unique as a snowflake and as perfect as Hugh Jackman’s abs. Together they form an optical illusion out of pattern, texture, shape, and color.

The only variations in color are white chocolate and dark chocolate. And at least two thirds are double stacked and filled with jam.

I lean forward to try to breathe in the spiritual essence of a timeless tradition, and choke on the toxic mushroom cloud of powdered sugar that shoots up at my face.

I have just been inducted into the wonderful world of Czech Christmas cookies.

My roommate looks up briefly as I hop around the room, coughing and frantically pounding at the recently acquired layer of white powder on my new black dress.

“You look like a coke head,” she tells me helpfully before returning her attention to the American television show House, MD.

Composing myself, I eye the tiny cookies warily.

They look back innocently, but it could be a trap. Gingerly I reach my hand into the mix, and I draw out one of the jam sandwiches. It’s a Christmas tree shaped and dripping with chocolate. Tiny decorative silver balls twinkle cheerfully under the dim, artificial, environmentally friendly dorm lighting. I bite in and taste cookie, then jam, then cookie again.

I only have two words for the taste sensation I experienced then: Under. Whelmed.

As long as there has been Christmas, there have been Czech Christmas cookies. That’s a lie, but traditions are timeless, aren’t they? For the required kitsch context, I present the country’s official website, creatively titled Czech Republic- The Official Website.

“Czech Christmas is certainly the sweetest time of year. Bakers literally try to out do each other with vanilla roles, gingerbread, snow kisses and dozens of other types of Christmas cookies. Family recipes are passed down through generations, so it’s no wonder that these Christmas goodies are not only lovely to look at but also melt in one’s mouth.”

How could these fabled cookies I’d heard so much about, be so bland and ordinary. No! I could not live in a world full of such false hope. There must have been something else wrong. Desperate and in need of guidance I turned to a Czech native, Maria Dzurnakova, the resident advisor of my dormitory at New York University in Prague.

“Where did you get the cookies?” she asked me solemnly, as the situation warranted.

I lowered my eyes in shame, and whispered my answer meekly.

“What was that?” she leaned in closer.

“Tsmmca,” I muttered.

“Sorry?”

“Tesco.” I couldn’t meet her eyes as she gently started laughing. I took that as my answer.

“Where do you buy them?” I asked her.

“We don’t buy them,” she smiled. “I don’t think anyone really buys them. We make them for ourselves.”

I smiled back, but inside my very soul quivered with horror at the memories of the last time I had tried to bake cookies from scratch. The New York City Fire Department still hadn’t forgiven me for that one.

I gathered my courage, and set out to the grocery store. I was going to make Linzer cookies.

I learned two things baking.

One: A fundamental rule (it might be a law of physics, I don’t know, I’m not a science major) about baking cookies: the closer to finishing you are, the more ‘friends’ you have hanging around you. In the grocery check out line: zero. Mixing the ingredients: one to two ‘“helpers” to lick the spoon. Once the cookies are in the oven, the smell wafts through the hallway and suddenly you’re the prom queen. They stream into the kitchen, circling like hungry, penniless vultures. I say that, of course, with the greatest love and affection.

Two: While pouring in the sugar, I found out that the phrase measure twice, cut once doesn’t work in baking.

When I took the cookies out of the oven I almost dropped them in shock. They were perfectly golden brown. A Christmas miracle, I saluted the big guy upstairs.

I shoveled them onto a plate, and my salivating assembly line spread the jam, stacked the cookies, and rolled them in powdered sugar as effectively as any General Motors factory. (Yes I know auto industry bankruptcy is looming). In minutes, piles of finished tarts were scattered across several plates.

We stood in respectful silence.

“They’re beautiful,” Evan Miller; a fellow student, whispered in awed tones.

“Get the milk!” someone cried. With that we pounced.

I came away with a cookie in the form of a slightly demented smiley face. I sunk my teeth in, and it melted on my tongue like the butter it was mostly made of. The cookie, however, was overshadowed by the homemade jam Maria had given to us to use. “Mmmmmh,” I heard someone moan in delight. Blissfully, I shut my eyes and saved my concerns about eating a 500-calorie cookie for another day. It was Christmas after all.

“Hey,” one of my friends interjected. “Aren’t these Austrian cookies?”

“I used Google,” I replied sharply. “I think know what I’m doing.”

“Many of the traditional cookies overlap countries,” Maria explained.

“Wait, so these aren’t traditional Czech Christmas cookies? But I used Google,” I lamented.

“The cookies I think of, when I think of Christmas are the honey cake ones, like ginger bread, like the ones you see at the Christmas fairs,” Maria said, “but my grandmother always makes ten or twenty different kinds of cookies for Christmas.”

“Let me guess,” I said, “You have to bake those from scratch too?”

“Of course,” Maria replied.

I wasn’t going through all of that alone again. Oh no. I made baking plans for the next Sunday with another Czech resident advisor, Jana Neupauerova. She offered to bring the secret family recipe.

I figure if I run through the entire New York University Czech staff, I can just steal their recipes, market them in the U.S. and start a cookie business that will put those smug Keebler Elves out of business.

And that’s how I learned the meaning of Christmas.

Related links:

Czech Christmas Traditions

Czech Republic- Official Website

Casey Glynn is a third year journalism and anthropology student at New York University. She is from Lakeville, Massachusetts.