In my family, gathering to bake Christmas cookies is an almost religious tradition. Every year, I meet my cousins, my aunt, my mother, and my grandmother to bake a ridiculous amount of sugar cookies and decorate them with colored glazes made from lemon juice and powdered sugar. As children, my cousins and I looked forward to our annual Christmas cookie baking nearly as much as we anticipated opening presents on Christmas morning. We spent an entire afternoon eating copious amounts of sugar glaze off of paintbrushes; how could we not love it?

The recipe for our family Christmas cookies is very simple. Any plain sugar cookie dough will do (we’re European, so we always prefer a dough with plenty of butter), and the sugar glaze is something we mix up from fresh-squeezed lemon juice, powdered sugar, and food coloring. It’s the decorating that really makes these cookies special. We use cookie cutters to make cookies in the shapes of Christmas trees, gingerbread men, angels, stars, snowmen, bells, and candy canes. The young children are essentially given free reign when it comes to decoration, so we have plenty of cookies that look like zombies or vomit. It’s alright because they all taste the same, and there’s a certain sense of freedom that comes with eating a monster Christmas cookie, especially in comparison with cookies decorated by the adults in my family. The women in my family are German, and they fit almost every implication of the stereotype. My mother, aunt, and grandmother are all impeccable decorators, and among them they establish an accepted color scheme and design for each shape of cookie. They then set up an assembly line by which cookies are decorated with amazing efficiency and uniformity.

I don’t particularly like most of the cookies we make for Christmas (notice there’s no chocolate to be found?), but I’d rather have those than any other treats around the holidays. Not only are they homemade, but they’re made with family, and with an incredibly deep sense of tradition. Making Christmas cookies together is a tradition in many families, but if it isn’t in your family, you can start a new tradition this Christmas! The first thing to start with is a basic collection of Christmas cookie cutters. Christmas trees, gingerbread men,  and other Christmas shapes are always good bets for the holiday season, but if you would like to bake for friends who don’t celebrate Christmas (or for secular events, like school holiday parties), mittens and snowflakes offer a non-denominational alternative. Like my family, you can use toothpicks, new paintbrushes, and spoons to decorate cookies, or use a cookie decorating set for more precision. A pastry bag will allow you to make 3-dimensional designs with frosting, while cookie stencils make decorating with sprinkles and sugars much easier.

In my home, Christmas cookies don’t last long enough to share with friends (guilty!), so we just keep them in tins and tupperware containers separated by parchment paper. But if you plan to share Christmas cookies with friends and neighbors, package them in pretty compartmentalized boxes that look almost professional!

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