Constable: Pandemic can't take bite out of Mount Prospect cookie tradition
Luminarias line this Mount Prospect neighborhood every Christmas Eve. But to truly shine a light on the 200 block of South Pine Street, you need to understand the cookie exchange.
“We're not missing this year,” promised 78-year-old resident Roberta Edmonson. She and her husband, Keith, moved onto the block in 1976 and quickly unpacked a Christmas tradition. “I always had cookie exchanges where I came from.”
Edmonson organized that first cookie exchange at a neighbor's house because she didn't have the furniture yet to host such a large gathering. It's been an annual event on the block every year since, with different houses open for neighbors to socialize inside, pick out the homemade cookies they want and munch a few, accompanied by a tasty beverage.
The pandemic, with restrictions on gatherings, sharing food and such, threatened this year's 44th annual cookie exchange, but Lorelei and Tim McDermott staged it outside Sunday in their front yard.
“COVID style,” Lorelei McDermott says. Everyone wore masks. People generally stayed 6 feet apart. And there was no eating of cookies, or even touching the creative dessert options.
Instead of being piled high in platters, all the cookies were delivered in plastic bags, which then were loaded into 21 disposable lasagna pans, each with the same assortment.
“This way, nobody handled my Baggies until they got home. It was a good way to work it out,” says Rosemary Hinkemeyer, 83, who moved onto the block in 1967 with her husband, Larry, who died in 2019. “Staying healthy was our main concern. It was fun. I was out there for about an hour.”
The dozens of cookies included some regulars.
“I like those little peanut butter cookies with a chocolate Kiss on top, slightly melted,” says Edmonson. “I made some, kind of like chocolate chip, but with macadamia white chocolate. Everybody brings something different, but some people have favorites they bring every year.”
Tradition, after all, is important to this block.
“I make my sugar cookies and cut out stars. That's my kids' favorite,” Hinkemeyer says. “I use confectionary frosting and green and red sugar just to make them Christmassy, and every one is a star.”
It's difficult to not see a star on their block. The neighbors order a shipment of about 20 Christmas trees, which are set up in the front yards and covered with lights. The village Wednesday declared the 100-300 blocks of South Pine Street as the “best decorated block.”
The 200 block has an official lighting ceremony every year for the “Tommy Tree,” a tree donated by neighbors in memory of Tommy McGovern, a neighborhood boy who died on Dec. 1, 1991. His mother, Renae McGovern, lost her husband, Tom, in 2019, but she remains an active member of the block.
“We did the Tommy Tree lighting, and that worked well,” McDermott says. Mask-wearing, socially distanced neighbors, led by her brother and fellow block resident John Ward, sang “O Christmas Tree.”
In October, one neighbor organized a safe afternoon Halloween party for the kids in the neighborhood, which includes a mix of new families among the longtime residents.
“I'm a newbie,” McDermott says of her 31 years on the block. “And like many other people on the block, we've lived in two houses.”
Most of the residents have deep roots in the community.
“Nobody on the block leaves,” Edmonson says.
McDermott is a cantor at St. Raymond de Penafort Catholic Church, just two blocks away. Many of the neighbors attend the church, and kids go to the St. Raymond School for children preschool through eighth grade. Even adult neighbors share similar stories of growing up in Mount Prospect, including teenage years working shifts at the popular Capannari Ice Cream shop.
Many of the neighbors have compared their block to a Norman Rockwell painting in the flesh.
“A couple of people brought baby strollers to the cookie exchange,” Hinkemeyer says.
“When I had babies on this block 30 years ago, I sort of co-raised my kids with six other mothers,” McDermott says with a laugh. “Now there's a whole other generation of little kids and 35-year-old moms.”
In an era where many suburbanites might not even know their next-door neighbors, anyone who moves onto this block gets a list with the phone numbers and names (including children) of everyone on the block. They support each other during bad times, celebrate the good times, and schedule block events throughout the year.
“You know what's great?” Hinkemeyer says. “There are a lot of young people, and they're into it as much as I am. It's great.”
When the 75th annual cookie exchange rolls around, those young people probably will be the old folks cheering all the new, young, energetic neighbors.