A giving heart: Mary Braddock and her family continue over 60-year Cookie Day tradition Friday

A Graham holiday tradition since 1958, Cookie Day returns Friday as Mary Braddock and her family invite the community for sweets. For over 60 years Braddock has provided cookies at her home for all in the community.

Thousands of cookies will be available at the event in Graham which will take place from 4-6 p.m. at 1010 Westwood Drive.

Mary Braddock said the event has grown so large that around 500 to 600 visitors now show up to the event each year looking for a plate of cookies made by her and her family members.

“It means a lot to me and my family knows it does. It’s very, very important to me,” Braddock said. “Cookie Day is my big thing. I save my money all year to pay for the cookies and the ingredients.”

Braddock said the event started before she had children and was initially for her niece and nephew. They were staying at her house while their parents were out of town and she told them to invite friends the next day for cookies.

“Then the next year their friends thought, ‘Hey, when is your aunt going to have Cookie Day?’ They asked me about it and I said, ‘Well we can do that.’ So those friends invited friends and they invited friends and then I had children and they started inviting friends (and it) just got started,” she said. “To begin with it was mostly my friends and my children and their friends and it was more of an intimate thing and it was in-house. It has always been (an event where) everybody’s invited, but it was more friends.”

Around 2010 is when Braddock said things really took off and the entire area began to come to the event.

Braddock’s family comes to help with the event. Her two daughters come from Houston and Dallas, and her two sons from Graham and Olney and bring their families along to be a part of the event.

“I used to do it all myself and now I couldn’t do it at all without my family. They come and they bake cookies,” she said. “I don’t like to ice them until the day, or at least the day before so they’ll be fresh. But I can bake them in and freeze them. I borrow my friend’s freezers because I have so many that my freezers are full (and) my friend’s freezers are full. ...The freezers are full of sugar cookies that are cut out into trees and bells and that kind of thing. We ice those Thursday and Friday. And then all my family bake chocolate chip snickerdoodles, oatmeal (and) all of the extra other things besides sugar cookies.”

Many people who visit the event came when they were children and now bring their children. Braddock said that tradition has brought many to her home including each year the Graham High School soccer team which runs to her house from the school, eats cookies and then runs back.

If there is one group that remembers Cookie Day each year it is the children who make the trip and now have a special name for Braddock.

“My name is Cookie now. People call me Mrs. Cookie. All the children at the church don’t know me by Mary at all, Mrs. Cookie is my name and it comes from my Cookie Day. I love it. I like to be known as Mrs. Cookie,” she said. “…The kids know all about Cookie Day so that’s good, I love that. The more people that come the better.”

Braddock said despite the rush for cookies each year she does not run out and will take the remainder to different places around the area.

“I take a bunch to the hospital for the nurses. I take a bunch to the post office and then I take some to the sheriff’s department and the police department. I’ve got several places where I take them,” she said. “Sometimes I have quite a few. It depends on the weather. Sometimes I don’t have any. My kids don’t take any until it’s over. They bake, they cook, they work and don’t make their sacks until it’s over because they want to make sure that the community gets theirs.”

The tradition will continue for now in Graham and Braddock will once again get to share her love of the Christmas season with all of those in the community.

“Christmas is my thing. I tell the kids all the time I say ‘Someday I’m just going to leave Christmas up all the time and they’re going to call me the eccentric old lady.’ And they say ‘Mom, you are the eccentric old lady.’ But I love Christmas,” she said. “...I couldn’t possibly do (Cookie Day) without my kids. They are wonderful. It’s sort of their Christmas present to me because they do it as a gift to me. And I do it as a gift to the city. So it just goes around.”