A Christmas cookie shaped like a camel was cut using a cutter originally used by Morning Call Opinion Editor Mike Hirsch’s grandmother. (Rick Kintzel/Morning Call)

Our German grandmother clung to food traditions as tightly as she clutched her rosary beads.

On Father’s Day, she breaded pork chops and fried them in butter. We devoured them cold, like an upscale fried chicken, at our annual picnic.

At Christmas, she baked the same 10 types of cookies — including Mexican Wedding Cakes (also called snowball cookies because the nut balls are dusted with powdered sugar), chocolate meringue Beacon Hills and the date-, nut- and candied fruit-packed Rocks.

But our meticulous Gram, ironically, is best remembered for botching a batch of cookies.

Her bungle set in motion a 55-year food tradition — one that has become a family favorite.

The year was 1966. Madalen Hirsch, as she was known to the non-grandchild world, bit into one of her just-baked cutout Christmas cookies.

The licorice flavor of anise overpowered the cookie, like sauerkraut on a Bavarian pretzel.

She figured out her mistake. Instead of anise extract, she had mixed in four-times-more-potent anise oil.

As my father would say, Ach du lieber!

She could not stomach throwing out the cookies, remembering all too well the lean years.

Decorated Christmas cookies rest on a tray cookies Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, at Morning Call Opinion Editor Mike Hirsch’s home in Macungie. About 20 family members gathered to frost cut-out Christmas cookies, continuing a tradition that started 55 years ago. (Rick Kintzel/Morning Call)

Madalen Deutschman and Robert Hirsch married in 1928 — the year before the Great Depression cast its gloom across the country. Two years later, Gram gave birth to their only child — my father.

My grandfather worked in an auto tire plant in Buffalo, New York. Gram stayed home with my father until the factory laid off Gramp. She temporarily became the breadwinner, finding work in a shirt factory.

Out-of-work Gramp was hopeless in the kitchen but entertained my young father at lunchtime. He spread peanut butter on one slice of bread, jelly on another and slapped the two pieces together in midair.

Perhaps because the Great Depression hung like a cloud over the first decade of their marriage, Gram and Gramp led a life of frugality.

Morning Call Opinion Editor Mike Hirsch receives help from his sister-in-law, Sue Hirsch, while decorating cookies Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, at his home in Macungie. (Rick Kintzel/Morning Call)

They never bought a house, never owned a car. Through the 1990s, Gram was still using her 1940s sewing machine and G.E. fridge (whose tiny freezer held only ice cube trays).

But how could Gram salvage these over-spiced cookies?

She summoned Dad and Mom and us four kids — her only grandchildren — to their apartment. She whipped up vanilla frosting, plopped it into smaller bowls and mixed in food coloring. Then she set us all to work.

We had a blast frosting the cookies and adding sprinkles and cinnamon balls.

The cookies were saved; they were tasty with frosting.

Janet Hirsch of Baltimore enjoys the fruits of her labor Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, at Morning Call Opinion Editor Mike Hirsch’s home in Macungie. About 25 family members gathered to frost cut-out Christmas cookies, continuing a tradition that started 50 years ago. (Rick Kintzel/Morning Call)

The four of us — I was 6 years old; Rob, 8; Kathy, 10; Linda, 11 — begged Gram to let us do this again the following year. A tradition was born.

For the next 16 years, we arrived at Gram and Gramp’s suburban Buffalo apartment the weekend before Christmas to frost cookies.

Many things were as immutable as a religious ceremony:

Evan Hirsch, 7, reaches for frosting Saturday, Dec. 4, 2021, at Morning Call Opinion Editor Mike Hirsch’s home in Macungie. (Rick Kintzel/Morning Call)

Changes to our family hit as fast and furious in the late 1970s and early 1980s as a snow squall coming off Lake Erie.

College graduations. Four marriages. Babies. My parents retired and moved to the Finger Lakes. My bride and I landed jobs with the Lake Placid News and moved to the Adirondacks.

One constant: Family gathered for cookie frosting. Toddlers joined in as soon as they could grasp a frosting knife or container of sprinkles.

My sister Linda moved to Florida, as did my parents in the ‘90s. She held a frosting session every year with her family and Mom and Dad.

One year, I introduced a factory frosting process. I set aside the last three dozen cookies and positioned everyone around the table with a different color of frosting.

I explained the “slap and pass” technique: I hand a cookie to the first person, who slaps on frosting and passes it to the next person. At the end of the line, a cookie is covered with a kaleidoscope of colored frostings a half inch high. A “sprinkle girl” adds the final flourish.

Channeling the intimidating Elf Foreman in “Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer,” I blew a whistle, started the production line and hollered, “Faster, faster! Quantity over quality!”

Assembly line frosting is now a two-decade-long annual addition to the tradition.

Madalen and Robert Hirsch of Buffalo, New York. They were known to their grandchildren as Gram and Gramp. (CONTRIBUTED PHOTO)

Gram died in 1994 at age 90. But her memory lives on, especially at Christmastime.

On Dec. 4, 20 family members arrived at our Lower Macungie house to frost cookies. The gang included all four siblings, their children and grandchildren. They drove from Buffalo, Baltimore, Brooklyn and Florida.

My sister Kathy and sister-in-law Sue brought cookies cut with Gram’s original cutters, including gingerbread men and a reindeer. Kathy handed out tins of Beacon Hills made with Gram’s recipe.

And we told the grandchildren the story of how Gram’s baking blunder continues to bring us together.

Mike Hirsch of Lower Macungie Township is The Morning Call’s director of content/opinion and community engagement. He can be reached at mike.hirsch@mcall.com.