Christmas Cookies

     For this blog, you're in for a treat. The Christmas cookie, a treat native to our kitchens, is most commonly baked around Christmas time. It can be any shape, although it is usely a shape that is commonly associated with Christmas, like a snowflake, Christmas tree, reindeer, candy cane, or something of the sort. Even in it's deliciousness, why do we do it? When exactyy did this tasty tradition start?

     The cookies have been around longer then Christmas has. However, after Pope Julius declared December 25 as Christmas day in 350 AD, Christians adopted cookie making as part of their Christmas celebration. The Christmas cookie actually came from the Dutch word "koekje," which means "small cake." It was the Pennsylvania Dutch who first introduced holiday cookies to America.  Then other Europeans brought their recipes when they came over to America, bringing some of the recipes we enjoy today.  We can thank Sweden for the spritz cookies topped with sugar crystals, Scotland for their shortbread, Greece for their Baklava and the Russian for their powdered sugar tea cakes. The German cookies, lebkuchen and springerle, are also favorites. As you can see, many of the Christmas cookie recipes we enjoy today came from European countries.

     Now, I'm going to insert my own opinion. As good old St. Nick came by on Christmas and left presents, people began thinking of a way to thank him....in the form of a Christmas cookie. They took the hard biscuit recipe and warped it by accident, ending up with a soft circular delicacy. Having been poor and conserative, they couldn't remake it for lack of flour, so they put the new "biscuit" out and, waking up on Christmas morning, found it all gone, with only a few crumbs left for the mice. Then, they told their neighbors and their neighbors told their neighbors and so on, and the cookie's popularity spread. Thus, we end up with the Christmas cookie.

     As we moderized, so did the cookie, and it spread from just Christains to everyone, becoming a tastly tradition. However the cookie came to be, it is now a tradition among most people to bake around Christmas, whether for Santa Claus or for our own stomachs.
Happy Holidays!