SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - Surrounded by chocolate chip, sugar and gingersnap cookies of all shapes and sizes, a group of women have gathered in the days before Christmas for 55 years to socialize.

Barb Bromley holds a cookie she received at the cookie party she has hosted for the past 55 years. - Jeanne Gagnon/NNSL Photo

Barb Bromley started hosting the cookie party in 1964 after a friend who started a cookie exchange in the late 1940s moved away to Whitehorse. She first hosted the party in her house on 53 Street, where the Great Slave Community Health Clinic now sits, inviting female friends to come. As the years went by, more and more people came and Bromley's daughter and daughters-in-law eventually got involved.

This year, on the third Wednesday of December - although the parties are usually held on the second Wednesday in December - Bromley hosted her 55th party at her daughter's house in Ndilo. Some 90 women brought homemade cookies to exchange as they talk about this and that.

"Some of them bring big boxes of cookies. They maybe made two or three different kind and they bring them out - four or five dozen – and then they take that many home but they pick out," said Bromley.

"Lots of people make chocolate chip cookies. Lots of people make sugar cookies. Lots of people make shortbread and some of them make them into candy canes or bells. And some of them make chocolate truffles with a cherry inside or wrapped in coconut. Lots of ginger snaps. Sometimes there's gingerbread men. This year, there was little gingerbread trees."

She added all parties were memorable.

"It really makes you feel the spirit of Christmas," she said. "We talk about everything and anything."

Jan Stirling and Esther Braden are two cookie party goers that bring shortbread cookies. Stirling has gone for many years to the party as she and Bromley have been friends for 30 years. For her, it's a way to see old friends and meet new people.

"It's really great," she said. "Some of us are getting older so we don't stay quite as late now."

Braden has also attended the party for quite a few years, bringing her shortbread cookies from an old recipe.

"It's a very happy time," she said. "It is a very special time in Yellowknife. There isn't anything like it."

A couple of men came over the years but the party remained a circle of women.

Bromley said the first man to come was a Scotsman who came with his wife, thinking the party was for couples. She said when he came in, he asked, "Where are the rest of the men?"

She said when he realized he was the first and only one there, he turned around and walked out, telling his wife he would see her later that day.

Bromley said the group plan a cookie recipe cookbook for the spring, with the proceeds going to the Alzheimer's facility.