We are ALL Dr. Babooner

Dear Dr. Babooner,

I have been on my feet in the kitchen for three days straight, faithfully baking the eleven different kinds of Christmas cookies my family expects to see displayed on the table when we sit down for our holiday meal.

Each cookie type calls for a specific set of ingredients and requires that I perform a carefully choreographed ritual that usually involves standing at the counter, kneading the dough, kneeling before the oven,  wearing the ceremonial mitts,  and arranging the finished offerings in a sacred tin.

At the meal, my cookies are the final course before we head off to church.  But at that point I’m sore from standing and exhausted from the cookie-baking effort.  I feel like I’ve already been to worship and I’d much rather take two ibuprofen and have a nap.

Does that make me a heretic?

Confusedly,
Aching Baker

I told Aching Baker she is NOT a heretic because all of her rituals seem perfectly ordinary and are widely practiced whereas heretics go very much against the grain. Also, “heretic” would be a good name for a twelfth type of cookie – probably something with a big fat walnut in the middle.  

But cookie baking is a form of personal sacrifice, and if she is concerned that not going to church after all that work will somehow count against her in the final tally, I would like to suggest that a good long nap is also form of sacred meditation.

But that’s just one opinion. What do YOU think, Dr. Babooner?