As I wrap up November’s theme of food and family, I wanted to remind you of a special gift you can give to your loved ones for Christmas: your writing.

I wrote about this last Christmas, so click here to revisit that post. In post for other holidays, I’ve talked about giving gifts of poetry and family stories.

My new idea this year is to write a family cookbook with stories. Each person who contributes a recipe should also write a short story about food to go with it. For example, my mom’s mom had a tradition of serving fried oysters for Christmas dinner. If I included the fried oyster recipe in a cookbook, I would write up the story of how my dad had to buy them each year. To get the freshest oysters possible, my dad would go to the fish market in Wheeling, West Virginia, on Christmas Eve. Wheeling has a large Italian community, and seafood is the traditional way to celebrate Christmas in Italian families. My dad said he did not want to get in the way of an Italian grandmother and her seafood order.

Stories like that will make a family cookbook even more precious.

Have you given someone the gift of your writing for Christmas? What did you give?