Christmas 2023 9th January 2024

My Christmas holidays took place in a happy atmosphere. My dad and I got the same clothes, a book by Jules Verne, and Bose headphones, which soon turned out to be so good that we had to share them equally. I was disturbed from the peace of the holiday by an amusing incident for me. Dad, who decided to bake Christmas cookies, decided to take action. He thought it would be fun, and I expected a dull afternoon spent in the kitchen. But as it happened, I had a great time. Dad is less so.

The goal was to be his favorite Linzer sweets with cherry marmalade. The dough was prepared according to the recipe and rested overnight in the refrigerator, carefully wrapped in cellophane. He took the dough out of the fridge in the morning and started preparing the other necessary things, molds, a rolling pin, trays, and an oven, while still tuning the last details from the Internet, such as temperatures and baking times. Then, it was after lunch, he started rolling the dough. And immediately, there was a problem. After many futile attempts, he could not roll the dough into one layer. The dough kept tearing into small pieces and sticking to the rolling pin no matter what he did. He repeatedly and generously sprinkled flour with a rolling pin and work surface, but to no avail.

"I didn't put glue in the dough, damn it," Dad lamented while rolling the dough. After almost two hours of futile struggle, my dad switched smoothly to "Latin" because he started saying words I didn't know. On my questioning face, he told me he had learned "Latin" very well while in the army for two years. Interesting. In the end, he forgot to set the timer in the oven, and the little cookies he could make burned completely, which it reported to us: eardrums, a fire alarm on the ceiling, and thick smoke coming from the oven where our only sheet of sweets was. Then, to my loud laughter, my dad, running back and forth, recited very loudly in Latin at least two pages, if not more. I had no idea how educated and religious my dad was. He didn't know whether to ventilate first, turn off the alarm or the oven, or try to save the candy. He was like Frost, who had forgotten his wand and ran back and forth in confusion, constantly slapping his head. And I laughed until I couldn't catch my breath. So, we ended up not having any Christmas cookies from our production, and to be honest, I'm pretty happy to be back at school.

Also, it was only after a delay that my dad learned the essential information not in any recipe, namely that the dough must be slightly cooled when rolling; otherwise, it will tear. So maybe next year.