When the final piece of turkey is finished and the guests depart home from their relative’s house on Thanksgiving night, the Christmas season is upon us. Black Friday and Cyber Monday kick off the season festivities with stores and online shopping slashing prices and handing out discounts to anyone who walks through the doors. That weekend also entails decorating the house, putting up the Christmas tree and hanging ornaments, lighting up the outside and an assortment of other activities.

After that madness, Christmas shows and movies are all that could be found on almost all TV stations. But my favorite task is to bake Christmas cookies. For my family, it is tradition to bake cookies and enjoy them not only on Christmas morning but the days leading up to Christmas.

Each year my mother cooks an abundance of cookies not only to eat but to gift to friends and family. In recent years I have joined her with this strenuous but rewarding activity.

The mainstays year to year are usually gingerbread, chocolate chip, rainbow, biscotti, and rugelah. My personal favorite is baking and eating the gingerbread men, but my family likes the rainbow cookies in particular.

Many of the cookies my mother makes were inspired by Christmas years from her youth and enjoying them throughout the season. Such as the Italian biscuit like cookie, biscotti, which my parents both use to enjoy while drinking their coffee. My mother said that this cookie was always in her house growing up and is now one of her favorite cookies for all the memories it holds. 

Although stressful at times, baking Christmas cookies yields a great deal of joy and pleasure. Of course baking the cookies is always an entertaining event with me always trying to sneak some cookies away to eat later on before my mom stores them away, hiding them until we assemble the plates for guests.
Then there is the giving aspect of the activity. Handing out these platters of cookies to our family and friends is always is a source of pleasure, seeing the smile on their faces and the happiness they seem to have about eating these presents.

Then comes Christmas morning, when I can finally overindulge in the the cookies that I have waited so long to eat. This truly is one of my favorite activities because the cookie always seem to bring not only my family together but others during the Christmas season.