As kids, as adults, we all love cookies. It's probably one of the favorite desserts of people of all ages. there is just nothing like those couple of days before Christmas when mom starts making the Christmas cookies. This is a time of year when cookies take on a whole new meaning.

Christmas is a magical time, especially for children. We all gather around eagerly to set up the Christmas tree. There isn't enough tinsel and ornaments to cover our masterpiece of nature. And after the tree is trimmed and we eagerly await Santa Claus, what do we do? We put out a plate of Christmas cookies for Santa to take with him on his way out. Of course what we don't tell our kids is that in the middle of the night we wake up, nibble on the cookies and leave just enough crumbs so that the kids know that Santa was there.

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Then of course there's Christmas Day and the week following when we have about 6 tins of these treats to munch on. This is our excuse to have cookies at breakfast, lunch, dinner and at every chance we get during the day. Snack time takes on a whole new meaning during the Christmas season. And what about these cookies? How many different kinds do you think there are? Well, there are probably more kinds of Christmas cookies than you can imagine.

There are of course your traditional Christmas cookie shapes. These come in the form of candy canes, Santas, stars and just about any kind of shape that you can associate with the Christmas season. And the cookies themselves are made from various ingredients. You have your plain old sugar cookies, chocolate, and the list goes on and on. Most of these cookies are made out of molds that you can buy at just about any baking goods store. They're pretty common.

Then you have your not so traditional Christmas cookies. This is where people get to be a little more creative and yet still add that Christmas touch. These can range from something as simple as a jelly cookie with small gum drops in the center to something as elaborate as the ever popular seven layer cookie, made up mostly of chocolate. These cookies would put a diabetic into a coma, but they are sure good.

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The truth is, the kind of cookies you could make at Christmas time are limited only by your imagination. And if you've got a lot of little kids in the house, you're going to need quite a bit of that imagination. Nobody wants to eat the same old candy cane cookies day after day. So you need to learn at least 4-5 new types of cookies to make everyone happy. because christmas is a magical time and christmas cookies are a big part of that magic.