Christmas cookies or Christmas biscuits are traditionally sugar cookies or

biscuit A biscuit is a flour-based baked food item. Biscuits are typically hard, flat, and unleavened. They are usually sweet and may be made with sugar, chocolate, icing, jam, ginger, or cinnamon. They can also be savoury, similar to crackers. ...

s (though other flavours may be used based on family traditions and individual preferences) cut into various shapes related to

Christmas Christmas is an annual festival commemorating Nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus Christ, observed primarily on December 25 as a Religion, religious and Culture, cultural celebration among billions of people Observance of Christmas by coun ...

History

Modern Christmas cookies can trace their history to recipes from

Medieval Europe In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of World history (field), global history. It began with the fall of the West ...

biscuits, when many modern ingredients such as

cinnamon Cinnamon is a spice obtained from the inner bark of several tree species from the genus ''Cinnamomum''. Cinnamon is used mainly as an aromatic condiment and flavouring additive in a wide variety of cuisines, sweet and savoury dishes, biscuits, b ...

ginger Ginger (''Zingiber officinale'') is a flowering plant whose rhizome, ginger root or ginger, is widely used as a spice and a folk medicine. It is an herbaceous perennial that grows annual pseudostems (false stems made of the rolled bases of l ...

black pepper Black pepper (''Piper nigrum'') is a flowering vine in the family Piperaceae, cultivated for its fruit (the peppercorn), which is usually dried and used as a spice and seasoning. The fruit is a drupe (stonefruit) which is about in diameter ...

almonds The almond (''Prunus amygdalus'', syn. ''Prunus dulcis'') is a species of tree from the genus ''Prunus''. Along with the peach, it is classified in the subgenus ''Amygdalus'', distinguished from the other subgenera by corrugations on the sh ...

and

dried fruit Dried fruit is fruit from which the majority of the original water content has been removed prior to cooking or being eaten on its own. Drying may occur either naturally, by sun, through the use of industrial dehydrators, or by freeze drying. ...

were introduced into the west. By the 16th century Christmas biscuits had become popular across Europe, with ''

Lebkuchen (), or () are honey-sweetened German cuisine, German cakes, moulded cookies or bar cookies that have become part of Germany's Christmas traditions. They are similar to gingerbread. Etymology The etymology of ''Leb-'' in the term is unc ...

'' being favoured in Germany and '' pepparkakor'' in Sweden, while in Norway '' krumkake'' were popular. The earliest examples of Christmas cookies in the United States were brought by the Dutch in the early 17th century. Due to a wide range of cheap imported products from Germany between 1871 and 1906 following a change to importation laws, cookie cutters became available in American markets. These imported cookie cutters often depicted highly stylised images with subjects designed to hang on

Christmas tree A Christmas tree is a decorated tree, usually an evergreen pinophyta, conifer, such as a spruce, pine or fir, associated with the celebration of Christmas. It may also consist of an artificial tree of similar appearance. The custom was deve ...

s. Due to the availability of these utensils, recipes began to appear in cookbooks designed to use them. In the early 20th century, U.S. merchants were also importing decorated Lebkuchen cookies from Germany to be used as presents. In Canada and the United States, since the 1930s, children have left cookies and

milk Milk is a white liquid food produced by the mammary glands of lactating mammals. It is the primary source of nutrition for young mammals (including breastfeeding, breastfed human infants) before they are able to digestion, digest solid food. ...

on a table for

Santa Claus Santa Claus (also known as Saint Nicholas, Saint Nick, Father Christmas, Kris Kringle or Santa) is a legendary figure originating in Western Christian culture who is said to bring gifts during the late evening and overnight hours on Chris ...

Christmas Eve Christmas Eve is the evening or entire day before Christmas, the festival commemorating nativity of Jesus, the birth of Jesus in Christianity, Jesus. Christmas Day is observance of Christmas by country, observed around the world, and Christma ...

, though many people simply consume the cookies themselves. The cookies are often cut into the shape of candy canes,

reindeer The reindeer or caribou (''Rangifer tarandus'') is a species of deer with circumpolar distribution, native to Arctic, subarctic, tundra, taiga, boreal, and mountainous regions of Northern Europe, Siberia, and North America. It is the only re ...

holly ''Ilex'' () or holly is a genus of over 570 species of flowering plants in the family Aquifoliaceae, and the only living genus in that family. ''Ilex'' has the most species of any woody dioecious angiosperm genus. The species are evergreen o ...

leaves, Christmas trees,

stars A star is a luminous spheroid of plasma held together by self-gravity. The nearest star to Earth is the Sun. Many other stars are visible to the naked eye at night; their immense distances from Earth make them appear as fixed points of ...

, or

angel An angel is a spiritual (without a physical body), heavenly, or supernatural being, usually humanoid with bird-like wings, often depicted as a messenger or intermediary between God (the transcendent) and humanity (the profane) in variou ...

Popular Christmas cookies

Gingerbread

Gingerbread Gingerbread refers to a broad category of baked goods, typically flavored with ginger root, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon and sweetened with honey, sugar, or molasses. Gingerbread foods vary, ranging from a moist loaf cake to forms nearly ...

has existed in some form since sugars and spices were brought back to Europe, from soldiers in the

Crusades The Crusades were a series of religious wars initiated, supported, and at times directed by the Papacy during the Middle Ages. The most prominent of these were the campaigns to the Holy Land aimed at reclaiming Jerusalem and its surrounding t ...

. However, it was not until

Queen Victoria Victoria (Alexandrina Victoria; 24 May 1819 – 22 January 1901) was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until Death and state funeral of Queen Victoria, her death in January 1901. Her reign of 63 year ...

and Prince Albert included it with a variety of other German Christmas traditions that the gingerbread cookies became primarily associated with Christmas. Gingerbread cookies are also traditional in

Alsace Alsace (, ; ) is a cultural region and a territorial collectivity in the Grand Est administrative region of northeastern France, on the west bank of the upper Rhine, next to Germany and Switzerland. In January 2021, it had a population of 1,9 ...

Bredele

Bredele are Christmas cookies in the Alsatian cuisine of France.

Chocolate crinkle

Chocolate crinkles are Christmas cookies from

Saint Paul, Minnesota Saint Paul (often abbreviated St. Paul) is the List of capitals in the United States, capital city of the U.S. state of Minnesota and the county seat of Ramsey County, Minnesota, Ramsey County. As of the 2020 United States census, 2020 census, ...

, United States. The cookie's name is derived from a crackle of its cookie because while baking the dough expands and flattens while the coated powdered sugar cracks, giving it a crinkle effect, making it resemble a

snowflake A snowflake is a single ice crystal that is large enough to fall through the Earth's atmosphere as snow.Knight, C.; Knight, N. (1973). Snow crystals. Scientific American, vol. 228, no. 1, pp. 100–107.Hobbs, P.V. 1974. Ice Physics. Oxford: C ...

. Thus, the cookie is an icon for a Christmas treat for it reminds one of

winter Winter is the coldest and darkest season of the year in temperate and polar climates. It occurs after autumn and before spring. The tilt of Earth's axis causes seasons; winter occurs when a hemisphere is oriented away from the Sun. Dif ...

due to its resemblance of

soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, water, and organisms that together support the life of plants and soil organisms. Some scientific definitions distinguish dirt from ''soil'' by re ...

covered with

snow Snow consists of individual ice crystals that grow while suspended in the atmosphere—usually within clouds—and then fall, accumulating on the ground where they undergo further changes. It consists of frozen crystalline water througho ...

Fattigmann

A traditional cookie which dates from the

Middle Ages In the history of Europe, the Middle Ages or medieval period lasted approximately from the 5th to the late 15th centuries, similarly to the post-classical period of global history. It began with the fall of the Western Roman Empire and ...

in Norway, '' Fattigmann'' cookies are deep fried in unsalted fat.

Kerstkransjes

Kerstkransjes are traditional Christmas cookies from

the Netherlands , Terminology of the Low Countries, informally Holland, is a country in Northwestern Europe, with Caribbean Netherlands, overseas territories in the Caribbean. It is the largest of the four constituent countries of the Kingdom of the Nether ...

. They are round with a hole in the middle. The most usual type uses almond chips as decoration.

Krumkake

'' Krumkaker'' are traditional cookies from Norway. They were originally baked over open fires using decorative irons; however modern cooks use electric or stovetop irons to bake these wafer-thin biscuits. ''Krumkaker'' owe their name, which means "bent cake" or "twisted cake", to the fact that they are wrapped in a cone shape.

Pepparkakor

''Pepparkakor'' are crisp, thin gingersnap biscuits from Sweden, traditionally cut out in flower and heart shapes.

Pfeffernüsse

'' Pfeffernüsse'' originate in

Scandinavia Scandinavia is a subregion#Europe, subregion of northern Europe, with strong historical, cultural, and linguistic ties between its constituent peoples. ''Scandinavia'' most commonly refers to Denmark, Norway, and Sweden. It can sometimes also ...

and date from medieval times when spices were used exclusively in holiday baking.

Repostería

''Repostería'' is a Mexican type of

shortbread Shortbread or shortie is a traditional Scottish biscuit usually made from one part sugar, white sugar, two parts butter and three to four parts plain flour, plain wheat flour. Shortbread does not contain leavening, such as baking powder or bakin ...

-like cookie that is lightly baked and dipped into a cinnamon sugar blend until the cinnamon sugar surrounds the cookie. These are often served with coffee or hot spiced Mexican chocolate.

Sandbakkels

'' Sandbakelse'' are sugar cookies from nineteenth century Norway. The dough is pressed into tins, and then baked in an oven.

Springerle

'' Springerle'' have been traditional Christmas cookies in south Germany (

Bavaria Bavaria, officially the Free State of Bavaria, is a States of Germany, state in the southeast of Germany. With an area of , it is the list of German states by area, largest German state by land area, comprising approximately 1/5 of the total l ...

and

Baden-Württemberg Baden-Württemberg ( ; ), commonly shortened to BW or BaWü, is a states of Germany, German state () in Southwest Germany, east of the Rhine, which forms the southern part of Germany's western border with France. With more than 11.07 million i ...

) and Austria for centuries. They are

anise Anise (; '), also called aniseed or rarely anix, is a flowering plant in the family Apiaceae native to the eastern Mediterranean region and Southwest Asia. The flavor and aroma of its seeds have similarities with some other spices and herbs, ...

-flavored cookies made from an egg-flour-sugar

dough Dough is a malleable, sometimes elastic paste made from flour (which itself is made from grains or from leguminous or chestnut crops). Dough is typically made by mixing flour with a small amount of water or other liquid and sometimes includes ...

. They are usually made in simple shapes, such as rectangles or circles. After shaping, they usually have a picture or design pressed into the soft dough with specially carved rolling pins or presses. After they are baked, the designs are sometimes colored if the intention is to use the cookies as decorations.

Sugar cookies

Also called

Amish The Amish (, also or ; ; ), formally the Old Order Amish, are a group of traditionalist Anabaptism, Anabaptist Christianity, Christian Christian denomination, church fellowships with Swiss people, Swiss and Alsace, Alsatian origins. As they ...

sugar cookies or Nazareth sugar cookies, the modern sugar cookie was created by the

Moravians Moravians ( or Colloquialism, colloquially , outdated ) are a West Slavs, West Slavic ethnic group from the Moravia region of the Czech Republic, who speak the Moravian dialects of Czech language, Czech or Czech language#Common Czech, Common ...

, who settled in the Nazareth area from Germany during the mid-18th century.

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania, officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a U.S. state, state spanning the Mid-Atlantic (United States), Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern United States, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes region, Great Lakes regions o ...

adopted the Nazareth sugar cookie as the official state cookie in 2001.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Christmas Cookies Cookies Christmas food American cuisine Canadian cuisine Christian cuisine