Every holiday season, my parents would dress my sister and me in our Christmas finery — velvet dresses and tights and stiff patent leather shoes — and drive us to the Carriage Club, where my grandparents were members.

The reason for the season: an afternoon decorating sugar-cookie Christmas trees with sticky-sweet icing and more sprinkles than you could shake a jingle bell at.

It was holiday chaos of the best kind, and we may as well have been painting on cardboard.

The trees nested perfectly in an aluminum tin with a plastic lid to carry away, destined for the trash. Who needs an overbaked, over-frosted monstrosity when there are Tupperwares full of homemade goodies at home? 

I’m seriously asking. Who?

Airy chocolate-chip meringues. Lacy-crisp oatmeal cookies. Dainty peanut-butter blossoms. Dyed-green marshmallow and cornflake holly clusters, with Red Hots for berries.

Shyeah. Now we’re talking. 

30-plus years later, I am still 37 percent Christmas cookie. Thai takeout containers full of my own lovingly baked sweets call to me from the kitchen as I type this.

It’s December 6, and I’ve already made chewy molasses cookies, Italian bakery–style sandwich cookies, and toasted almond snowballs. (Smack that reply button for recipe links!)

And dear reader, I have something sweet for you, too: It’s Shrimpmukkah!

Shrimpmukkah is more than a feeling. It’s a place: a page on Talking Shrimp’s website that features roughly a bazillion freebies from whip-smart marketers, email strategists, productivity (and anti-procrastination) mavens, breathwork teachers, media consultants, and more.

I absolutely recommend a languid scroll through all the goodies!

But it’s a lot to take in, so here are some of my favorites to CTRL + F your way directly to:

• Kelley Hartnett’s A Pep Talk for Weary Business Owners: 7 Quick Tips to Help You Market Your Brand When You’re Fed Up With the Marketplace (Don’t go to her website! You’ll want to throw money at her immediately!)
  
• Cathlyn Melvin’s TEDxDemystified: Insider secrets from TEDx organizers and curators (She’ll give you better strategies than picturing the audience naked as you slay your talk…)
  
• Iona Holloway’s Bare Minimum Visualization (I’m hearing amazing things about her breathwork app, Soul.)

And obviously, you should peep my latest freebie, Win Hearts With Words: 15 copy tweaks to make strangers fall in love with your brand. (That’s a direct link to my website because I’m in charge here.)

Shrimpmukkah is different from Christmas cookies: It is not possible to overindulge in freebies. No one can guilt you for going back to the freebie jar.

And unlike those country-club Christmas trees, you will not want to trash these treats. Lovingly save them in a desktop folder “Tupperware” and snack on them all through the season.

These cookies will make you smarter.
Check out the Shrimpmukkah page and let me know which ones you snag!

I may not survive actually the week without peanut-butter blossoms,
Paige