By James V. Horrigan
Staff Writer
Christmas is a time for family, friends and tradition. Sometimes the three combine to form a sum greater than its parts.
The 30th annual “Christmas Cookie Bake-Off” coordinated by Laura Bustin, manager of the Scarborough branch of the Saco & Biddeford Savings Institution, is an example. The full-day event, which took place this year at Bustin’s home in Portland, began early Saturday morning and didn’t conclude until 12 hours had passed and about 80 dozen cookies were baked.
Nobody is sure of the exact number, she said.
“We gave up counting because it got to be too much,” Bustin said.
According to her sister, Sherry Ambrose, of Lynn, Mass., counting took too long.
“Baking them was more important than counting them,” Ambrose said.
Bustin and company may not know exactly how many cookies they produce each year, but they know exactly what kind they make.
This year white chocolate bark with cranberries and milk chocolate bark with almonds have been added to a list so long it would make a Keebler elf throw up his arms in surrender.
“It’s evolved over the years. We don’t always make the same cookies,” Bustin said.
Malinda Orrico of Portland, who along with Carol Bartlett of South Portland, has baked Christmas cookies with Bustin since the first bake-off in 1978, held up a piece of paper covered on both sides with words and numbers.
“We’ve got one batch of snickerdoodles, three batches of molasses, two batches of no-roll sugar cookies, two batches of thumbprints, one batch of buckeye ball candy, three batches of chocolate crinkle cookies, six batches of sugar cookies, one batch of gingerbread men, one batch of mincemeat cookies and two batches of fudge,” Orrico said.
So what happens to the nearly 1,000 cookies when they’re done?
“We give them away to friends, family, neighbors, widows, widowers,” Bustin said.
But are they eaten? Is there any guarantee their cookies aren’t treated like a holiday fruitcake?
“When people give us back the tins so they can get more next year, [it shows] they want the cookies,” Bustin said.
Carol Bartlett said she knows how popular the cookies are by how early the clamoring begins.
“It starts around Thanksgiving,” Bartlett said. “People ask me, when’s the cookie bake-off this year?”
Five years ago, when word of the 25th annual bake-off reached L.L. Bean, the company designed a  logo and put it on several canvas tote bags and a bunch of long-sleeve polo shirts. Although the items weren’t for sale, models wearing the shirts were featured in the 2002 L.L. Bean Christmas catalogue.
The event was conceived by their friend, Marianne Milliken, who died in 1980, two years after the first bake-off, when she and her husband were hit and killed by a drunk driver at the intersection of Broadturn Road and Beech Ridge Road in Scarborough. The event has continued every year since in Milliken’s memory.  
Carol Bartlett said she didn’t think the event would have ever happened without Milliken’s initiative.
“Marianne was the one responsible for getting us organized originally to do this. It was her gift to us. She’d have a smile on her face, knowing that we’re still at it,” Bartlett said.
Nobody plans it, but at some point in every bake-off since, Bustin said, Milliken’s name is raised and her memory cheered.
“It just seems to come up on its own,” she said.
Bustin thought it was Milliken’s organizational skills that led the group in subsequent years to divide the tasks between them. Orrico does the mixing, Bartlett the rolling and Bustin the baking. But her sister’s job may be the most important, Bustin said.
“My job is to give them the math so when they want to triple the recipe they can,” Ambrose said. “I was the home ec major so I know there are 16 tablespoons in a cup. If we’re tripling the recipe, they need me.”
When it comes to clean-up however, everyone pitches in, including Bustin’s daughter, Lizzie Bustin, 15, a sophomore at Deering High School. Her mother said Lizzie does a lot of cookie decorating, too, but her real work doesn’t begin until the baking is over.
“I give them massages. They’re aging, they get in a lot of pain,” Lizzie Bustin said.
Orrico, Ambrose and her mother agree, but Bartlett said it wasn’t about growing old.
“We start at eight in the morning. And we go until it’s done,” she said.
In a day full of reminiscing, Laura Bustin pulls out a grocery tape from the 1987 bake-off, when each baker’s share was less than $11.
This year, Orrico said, they each contributed double that amount, or about $22.
A few minutes later Bustin produces a photo from the 1985 bake-off. She apologizes for not having any images from the event’s first few years.
“We didn’t take pictures in the beginning. We didn’t know it was going to go on for 30 years,” she said.