Friends Chip In on a Holiday Tradition

You could call the 65 well-dressed women who gathered in a Rancho Palos Verdes home last week cookie monsters.

Or you could call them friends of Arliene Hillinger, 66, who has been holding holiday cookie exchanges for several dozen friends for 28 years.

Hillinger is a former president of the now-defunct Redondo Beach Junior Women’s Club, and many of her friends also are former club members or fellow tennis players.

The camaraderie and the cookies are the draw for Barbara Kemp, 70, who says she has missed only one cookie exchange, and that was because of the flu.

Fran Shank, 71, says she has missed only one cookie exchange since moving to Bend, Ore., 11 years ago. Shank, who drives 850 miles, wins the award for farthest traveled. (Her cookie of choice: chocolate clusters. “They travel well,” she said.)

Cookie exchange rules are fairly simple: Bring six dozen cookies. Lay them out for everyone to see. Take a cookie from everyone else’s platter. Leave with up to 72 different cookies.

Guests also bring gifts, which Hillinger takes to a home for abused children in Banning.

The cookies at Hillinger’s most recent bash included Snickerdoodles, M & M chocolate chips, chocolate chip goodies, mini-fruitcakes and mothballs (butter cookies rolled in powdered sugar).

Hillinger also spends about two months and $2,000 preparing everything from curried egg salad to cherry apple bread for her guests.

Hillinger says she couldn’t stop giving the annual party if she wanted to.

“(My friends) won’t let me stop having them,” she says.