A Santa, a dove, a donkey, a cat, a bow, a star—all the festive cookie-cutter shapes that make their yearly appearance on December 1st remind me it’s time to get into the holiday spirit.

Making cookies with my mom is one of my most cherished Christmas memories. From gingerbread to sugar cookies to lemon meringue, we had a different baking agenda every weekend. 

When I was younger, one of my favorite parts of the baking process was putting cookies and other Christmas sweets into the treat bags that we pull out from the basement every year. I would hand them out to anyone and everyone: the crossing guards on the way to school, the mailman, the trash collectors, my neighbors, my friends at school and my extended family. 

Of course, we would enjoy our cookies as a family as well. On Christmas Eve, we would take the cookies out of the freezer and warm them up to enjoy while cuddled up on the couch watching Elf and all our other favorite holiday movies. 

Sneaking cookie dough while my mother carefully dusted the rolling board with flour so the sticky dough wouldn’t attach to the rolling pin, jamming out to the Sia and Johnny Mathis Christmas albums, picking out my favorite cookie cutter shapes—these are core memories to me now.

Sometimes I would help make the special Christmas morning cinnamon coffee bread, a buttery loaf served with runny sugar sweet icing. It’s a yearly tradition in my family. When I was younger, the work that went into crafting this recipe seemed almost magical. The dough had to be perfectly mixed so that it wasn’t too dense, and it needed just the right amount of crumble to be carefully formed into a Swiss roll shape. 

Today, the process of rolling the dough, dusting the cookie cutter board, and placing the cookies with care on the baking sheet is simple. While I’m more capable of baking on my own now, I still find opportunities to bake with my mom and my friends because I have realized that the “magic” I was feeling was the experience of baking with my mom. I have found that baking with people I care about makes the experience much more fun. 

While baking to my favorite Christmas songs like Sia’s “Candy Cane Lane” or Kelly Clarkson’s “Underneath the Tree” is great fun, my favorite part of the experience is showing gratitude to the often underappreciated people in my life. The connection that I feel during the baking process should be shared, and sometimes all it takes is a small bag of cookies to make someone’s holiday. Bringing cookies to an event is also a great way to make new friends. 

Spread some holiday joy this season by making some holiday treats to share with the people who make your lives easier. Here are links to some of my favorite recipes:

Hot Chocolate Cookies (Love From the Oven)

Classic Sugar Cookies (Betty Crocker)

Happy Baking!