MADISON — One of the major traditions of Our Lady of Gaudalupe Parish’s Fall Festival is making and selling Pfeffernusse cookies.

These cookies have been a tradition at St. James Church in Madison for decades. During the Into the Deep process, the cookies have become a means of connection across the merged church communites.

History and challenges

Dee Nicolai, parishioner and Pfeffernusse cookie coordinator, shared the history of these unique cookies.

“Pfeffernusse is a German Christmas cookie about the size of a thumb. It is traditionally made in Germany, Holland, and Belgium. St. James Church was built as a German Catholic Church in the 1920s. During the 1970s, one parishioner donated Pfeffernusse cookies for the Fall Festival bake sale.”

The cookies sold out rapidly, and the parish soon decided to expand making them and involve more parishioners.

“A new tradition was born. Since that time, Pfeffernusse cookies have been a featured item of the annual Fall Festival.”

This year’s Fall Festival was on November 15.

The decades haven’t been without challenges.

“Cookie rolling has changed over the years. Social distancing during COVID forced the rolling crew to be reduced to six people, hand rolling to be eliminated, and more mechanization to be implemented. The mechanization has stayed, but hand rolling each cookie has returned, giving every cookie that ‘made at home’ feel.”

Pfeffernusse cookies are a spice cookie, somewhat akin to gingerbread, but smaller and shaped in circles. They also usually include the unique addition of black pepper, which blends with the other spices to create a warm, complex flavor. Many people eat them by dunking the cookies in coffee, milk, or sugar.

Uniting the parish

The cookie rolling is far more than a fundraiser. Nicolai said, “While rolling cookies to raise money . . . there are many wonderful side effects. Friendships are renewed. New friendships are forged . . . Concerns for ailing and struggling parishioners are shared and addressed.”

Dee’s husband Roger’s favorite part is the bonds that occur across generations. “There is less opportunity for this in our modern world as families scatter far and wide . . . because we’ve been rolling for 49 years, we are seeing second and third generations of loyal contributors to this effort.”

Uniting age groups isn’t the only advantage.

Marie Ethen, parish life coordinator, spoke to the way various communities within the parish have united.

It started with the decision to share Sunday Mass across the whole pastorate, several years ago.

“Soon after Good Shepherd and St. Raphael were brought together into a pastorate, we moved all Sunday Masses to St. James Church. That naturally helped parishioners see each other more as they were coming and going. Since that time, we have seen more participation from various pockets of our community, including young adults and Hispanic members . . . I think that uniting for Sunday Masses for a couple of years, in addition to uniting staff and leadership, has really helped our community grow together and appreciate the many facets of our parish membership.”

Hispanic volunteers swell numbers

Including the Hispanic community was a significant move in increasing the offerings of the festival and the number of volunteers.

“We’ve also worked to increase bilingual communications about parish happenings, which has likely helped,” Ethen commented.

“The festival and cookie-making are easy ways for members of our community to serve and get to know others. So the invitation to join in the fun has been met with success.”

“When we announced this year that we were looking for new leaders, we made the announcement in English and Spanish at Masses and in parish publications,” Ethen added.

Two of the three main festival leaders this year are Hispanic.

“We also made some personal invitations to quilters and some Hispanic volunteers to provide crafts and tamales for sale.”

These invitations were successful — tamales have been sold at the festival for three years now, and a quilting group with a long history at St. Joseph Church makes quilted gift bags that are the perfect size for a bag of Pfeffernusse and a packet of tea.

Young adults get involved

The invitation to assist in cookie rolling was also extended to the young adults of the parish. Garrett Solum, one of the young adult leaders of the parish, shared how he got involved.

“After Mass one weekend, Dee pulled me aside and asked if I could try to recruit some [young adults] to help with Pfeffernusse cookie rolling. I had never heard of this before, so I was like ‘what the what’ rolling?”

“The first week I went by myself to check it out,” Solum said.

“Once I saw how easy the task was and how fun it was to sit and visit with others, I started to recruit harder. I posted in our YA group chat, how easy and fun of a time I had and encouraged everyone to join me the next week . . . I started to post memes in our group chat to try and encourage others to join. To my surprise, others began attending with me each week, and they even started posting their own memes to invite more people! Even Father Drew [Olson, the pastor] got into the fun!”

Solum was surprised by how essential these little cookies are for parish fundraising.

“I was really surprised to find out that the cookie rolling portion of the Fall Festival is the biggest line item for the entire fundraiser. It’s crazy how these little cookies can make thousands of dollars for the parish and how easy it is to help out.”

Ultimately, however, Solum thinks what drew people in was the sense of community.

“The whole task of rolling cookies is very simple, so it’s a great way to just sit around the table and visit with someone who you haven’t met before. It’s been a great opportunity for our new parish to grow in community and meet people who you’ve seen their face on Sunday before but have never talked to. And there were quite a diverse group of people coming to roll and help with the cookie efforts. We had our young adult group, we had elderly parishioners who have been doing this for 20-plus years, we had families with their children, Hispanics, and non-Hispanic all coming together to help the parish.”