Christmas cookies

Every Christmas many households prepare Christmas cookies for Santa Claus. These special cookies are put on a plate with a glass of milk, so Santa can enjoy them while he is positioning the presents under the Christmas tree. While there are hundreds of recipes for Christmas cookies available, professing that they were the traditional cookies that are Santa's favorites, perhaps it would be nice to track down the real Santa's Christmas cookies and find out which are the cookies that Santa would to find on the plate the most.

This tradition dates back in the United States to the thirties of the twentieth century, where on Christmas Eve children left cookies and milk somewhere in the room where the Christmas tree was on display, easily visible for Santa, most likely on a table or chair right next to it. Christmas cookies used to be sugar cookies, usually ornated with some sprinkles, also white coated, to dub for snow, or in form of Christmas related stuff, like sugar canes, Santa, Snowman, Elves and similar.

German Christmas tradition dates way back, where the traditional product is not a simple cookie, but a form of gingerbread, called Lebkuchen, which can be nevertheless baked in form of cookies or any bigger format, up to a bread size. This traditional Christmas cookie can be traced as a Christmas ornament back to the thirteenth century. It has been apparently derived from a honey cake, which was already known in ancient Egypt. In recent times, Lebkuchenherzen, a form of the same cookie kind, but in a shape of the heart, has gained popularity.

Although the Lebkuchen seems to exist in almost any nation, the allegedly official website of Saint Nick, or Santa Claus, has the Santa's own favorite Christmas cookies recipe available for download in Adobe Acrobat's PDF format. Interestingly enough, the unimaginative sugar cookies are trademarked by William Wallace Peat. Unfortunately, there are dozens of alleged official Santa websites around, most of them have cookie recipes of their own. In Sweden, for instance, Santa prefers brownies, while in the UK and Australia sherry and mince pies are Santa's favorites.

The attempt to ask Santa himself for the recipe failed miserably, because there are many locations defined as Santa's dwelling, starting with Canada, where he is supposed to be honorary citizen, to Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Greenland and finally Finland, which also has a theme park in Santa's honor, the Santa Claus Village. Several email addresses delivered all different answers and different recipes, none could prove beyond reasonable doubt that the genuine Santa answered the question. Perhaps Santa rather likes the variety on offer and we should best leave it at that.

www.authorclub.info