Friday, December 5, 2008

What makes a Christmas cookie a Christmas cookie?

So J and I have been together 7 years this weekend. The actual date was Dec. 7th, but we met on a Friday so we started to reminisce tonight. One of the things that we brought up about that first night was that I invited J back to my parents and one of the things we had there was Christmas cookies. Once at my house, J was disappointed because he saw that the majority of the cookies in the box were the peanut butter cookies with the Hershey kiss.

I did not know until tonight that he does not consider these cookies. I guess there was a friend of his growing up whose mom made these cookies all the time and thus he does not associate them with Christmas cookies.

So we got into the discussion of what then constitutes a Christmas cookie. He says that any butter cookie cut out or shaped like something Christmasy is a Christmas cookie. He also says that something labor intensive that is only found at Christmas time like my mom's sandbakles are Christmas cookies, but not things like the peanut butter cookies with the Hershey kiss, or his mom's pignoli cookies or rainbow cookies. His argument is that it doesn't matter if they are made at Christmas, or the majority of the time that you see them, it is the Christmas season, they have to be "Christmas Cookies" to be a Christmas cookie - weak argument in my opinion.

So what do you think signifies a cookie as a Christmas cookie? What cookies are there that if you saw them at another time of year would you feel was out of place? Do you think the peanut butter cookie with the Hershey kiss is a Christmas cookie by your definition? Our waitress at the bar tonight couldn't make a clear definition of what she felt a Christmas cookie was, but she did feel that the peanut butter cookie was a Christmas cookie. The chocolate chip cookie and the oatmeal cookie - definitely not! What do you think?

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