Star Diary • Eddie Jackson tells us what he eats when he’s shooting

y 18-year-old nephew walked up to me at a family cookout a while back and asked where we’d be for Christmas. I wanted to hug him, not for his suggestion that we all get together—although that was sweet. I wanted to hug him because it was September 27, and his ability to think that far ahead was the most hopeful thing I’d heard in months. Most of us haven’t been able to plan for the next day in 2020, let alone figure out Christmas three months in advance. On September 27, I didn’t even know where we’d be living in December, so I brushed off the question and changed the subject.

But the crazy thing is, I actually had been thinking about Christmas— along with everyone else at this magazine. We edit and photograph our holiday issues in the summer, and as I write this and get ready to send the issue off to the printer, I honestly don’t know how we’ll all feel when it arrives. I’m not sure who our next president will be, or how the pandemic will play out, or if families will fly to see each other this year. I’m not even totally sure if “Happy Baking!”—the big line we put on the cover—will sound too…happy.

I keep thinking back to an issue we published earlier this year, right before Covid-19 struck, with a line on the cover that said “Make a Sheet Cake and Everything Will Be Fine.” The timing was terrible: I mean, a sheet cake is great, but it wasn’t going to make everything OK—and it sounded out of touch when the issue came out a month later. So we thought long and hard about what to put on the cover of this issue, and we kept coming back to the things that bring us joy: familiar faces, fun recipes, festive cocktails and…cookies. So many cookies. Giant cookies, tiny cookies, crackle cookies, cookies that look like Mrs. Claus. We decided that we are making cookies this year, no matter what. And we’re making Yule logs, too, and holiday roasts and over-the-top latkes. All of it.

The holidays aren’t canceled. We’re just going to have to do them the way the Whos down in Whoville did: Let go of the things we can’t have this year and appreciate the people, and the food, around us. If we do that, then

Maile Carpenter Editor in Chief @maile__fnmag