Cookie Walk 2017 was a huge $9,000-plus success!

In the fall of 1992, St. Stephen’s bought land for our church building. Even though we had not yet broken ground, the late Jack Kohler—a prickly, but remarkably talented character who over the years had graced many Baltimore parishes—suggested we hold a Christmas sale in the house on the property.

“We will call it the ‘CookieWalk’.” he declared, grandly. Nobody knew what a Cookie Walk was. “That’s the whole point,” said Jack, “People will be intrigued and come to find out what it is. All we need to do is ask each parish family to bake at least five pounds of cookies and bring them to church the week before the sale”.

We sent flyers to the neighborhood and piled the donated cookies high on trays all around the house. And people came!

Our neighbors chose from the selection of cookies and paid by the pound. Some of our parishioners contributed greens and some gave us some homemade jam. And some of our neighbors became parishioners. Cookie Walk was born.

On Saturday, December 2nd, 2017, we held our 26th annual Cookie Walk. Like the Church itself, this sale has grown—neighbors and friends turned up in droves to buy our scrumptious home-baked cookies.

Work for Cookie Walk begins in the spring when Cindie Baker starts making jams and jellies. Parties assembled throughout the autumn to make Christmas puddings, peanut brittle, and candied nuts. Last, but very far from least, cookie baking begins. This year parishioners contributed more than 1,000 pounds of cookies.

In the week before the sale, we had a wonderful turnout of volunteers to decorate fresh balsam wreaths and make table decorations from donated greens. People scoured their houses to contribute gift items for the gift table. This year, at the end of the three-hour sale we had made more than $9,000 dollars. Best of all we had a great deal of fun and fellowship.

To each and every one of you who baked cookies, donated greens, gave gifts for the table, made peanut brittle, pudding, nuts, jams, jellies, wreaths and arrangements, our heartfelt thanks and appreciation. Your gift of time and talent to man the tables and attend the work parties was terrific.

It’s truly a team effort, and the culmination of planning by lots of capable folks who volunteer their time and talent. So far, Cookie Walk’s gross receipts represent a 15 percent increase over our proceeds from last year.

Check out the gallery of photos from this year’s Cookie Walk, and mark your calendars for next year’s Cookie Walk: December 1st, 2018.