What is the history of the Cookie Exchange?
” Since 1997, I’ve stated that the oldest published Cookie Exchange history that I’ve known of, was from a recipe pamphlet that I inherited from my mother in law, dated 1962. After being asked this question yet again five times just this week, I decided to search again and find a better answer. Then the proverbial light bulb went off over my head… I’ve been a member of Ancestry.com for the last several years and have had access to their Historical Newspapers Collection. When I searched this time over a thousand articles pulled up! Obviously, I couldn’t copy all of them but I did copy a few, see my folder screenshot below and notice the dates. The earliest printed reference is 1936 in Syracuse, NY. (See below for the article) One would be correct and could easily say that the Cookie Exchange as we know it, came to be in the early 20th Century. The question of “who first” lingers, but the bottom line is that we will probably never know who ‘thought of it first’. It may be the kind of e
