I AM THE HEAD COOKIE bitch and this is my party. The Christmas cookie club is always on the first Monday of December. Mark it on your calendar. Twelve of us gather with thirteen dozen cookies wrapped in packages. Homemade, of course. We each bring a dish to pass around and a bottle of wine. Sixteen years ago, when we first started, we’d drink the wine and then go dancing. Now we drink some and sit and talk at my house, or put on Al Green and dance. “Love and Happiness,” that’s our favorite. We take turns telling the story of the cookie we have made. Somehow each story is always emblematic of the year. We pass out our packages and donate the thirteenth dozen to our local hospice. We donated cookies from the beginning. The Christmas cookie club is about giving, not just the yummy morsels we share with our girlfriends and our families but also with people we don’t know who are having a bleak time and might appreciate a wrapped sweet.

Because, believe me, in the midwest the depths of winter can be bleak. Gray skies. Cold. What daylight there is is often overcast. The bountiful lakes make summer glorious, but they hang clouds in the winter. You need to add light and joy. After all, isn’t Christmas with its lights, and Hanukkah with its candle flames, about adding illumination to this dark time of year? We need to remind ourselves that the sun will eventually push the night to more reasonable margins. The Christmas cookie club, if it’s anything, is a reminder of delight. And, of course, a reminder that girlfriends help one another to endure the grind and to celebrate the joy.

I have rules that have been devised over the years. Just so you know, if you want to form your own party, here they are:

1. No chocolate chip cookies. One year five of us made them.

2. No bars. They stick to each other and crumble.

3. No plates covered in saran wrap and bows. Just try carrying twelve paper plates wrapped in saran wrap. I used to be a waitress and even I can’t do it. Plus, they’re too limp to bestow to a charity. The containers have to hold the cookies and make an attractive gift. The added advantage is that we can use the containers later to wrap other presents.

4. No more than twelve women in the group. One year, there were fifteen of us and everyone complained that it was too difficult to make sixteen dozen cookies. I never got that three more dozen were such a big deal. But I bowed to peer pressure. The group is only twelve. And we make a baker’s dozen cookies. Besides, there’s poetry to that.