Sunday, Meiyan Yip and Sue Johnson will be celebrating a special anniversary with cookies.
In fact, the anniversary is about cookies — and friendship.
For 50 years, the lifelong friends who grew up together in Whitehorse, studied at the University of British Columbia, then moved to Coquitlam to start and raise their families, have been hosting a holiday cookie party on the first Sunday in December for friends, relatives and colleagues.
By any estimation, that’s a lot of cookies.
Yip said the tradition grew from their mothers, who hosted similar parties every year in Whitehorse. In the weeks preceding the holiday season, invitations would get sent out and the baking would commence. Each guest would bring their own batch of cookies and, when the party was over, could pack up a variety to bring home to their own families.
Johnson remembers it as a wondrous occasion that always produced a bounty of sweet treats.
“It does get you ready for Christmas,” she said.
And when, as young women, the friends moved to Vancouver to attend university (Yip took up teaching, Johnson studied nursing), they decided hosting a similar party would be a good way to make new friends and connect with others from the far north.
Yip said the first affair was fairly spartan. Their tiny student apartment on West Broadway in Vancouver was mostly furnished with “bricks and boards.” The coffee table upon which the cookie trays were displayed was an old suitcase.
But the friends loved the way the gathering lightened their mood and forged their connection to family traditions so far from home.
“We’re both traditionalists,” Johnson said.
Over the years, as the women’s lives evolved, so did the party. The first gatherings mostly involved school chums, then, as they embarked upon their careers and moved to the suburbs, co-workers and neighbours were brought into the fold. When they had kids, their offspring's friends parents were invited.
Yip said, in a sense, they’ve been able to mark the passage of time by the nature of the conversations at their parties: from talk of boyfriends in those early years; to who was getting married, then having children; to the types of activities their kids were involved; to career challenges; to — more commonly now — the aches and pains of getting older.
But the premise of the party has never wavered. It alternates yearly between Yip's and Johnson’s homes, almost all the guests are women and no kids older than infants are allowed.
Johnson said alternating the host’s home gives each a break from having to decorate their house early, although Yip countered that sometimes, that can be a good thing — “It’s motivation,” she said.
Only one year did the cookie party almost not happen, when a late fall snowstorm limited guests to those who could walk to the event. Otherwise, it attracts about 50 to 60 people annually, and sometimes as many as 100.
Neither Yip nor Johnson can venture a guess as to how many people have attended the party over the years. And they know of at least one who has been coming for 45 years.
Keeping the party going so many years has been far from a burden, Yip said.
“You look forward to it.”
