I had no idea.
Baking special cookies and holiday treats is one of my favorite Christmas traditions. Little did I know, before reading The Gift of the Christmas Cookie, that Christmas cookies were first made in nativity shapes as a way to share the story of Christ’s birth to villagers who couldn’t read. Did you know that?
Richly illustrated, The Gift of the Christmas Cookie is a Christmas story of giving. What a great book to read to your children during the holiday hubbub, to remind them that getting isn’t where it’s at.
In the story, Jack’s excitement over the rare smell of holiday baking in his kitchen is quickly turned into disappointment when his mother tells him the cookies are for the needy people at their church. With his dad gone looking for work, Jack is feeling pretty needy himself. While rolling out the cookies, Jack’s mother shares with him the story of the Christmas cookie.
Armed with his new lesson, Jack’s heart softens toward a stranger on Christmas Day and he shares a precious gift.
This tender story of giving is not just about cookies – but gifts of the heart that last forever.
Want to win a copy? Leave a comment below telling me either 1) Your favorite Christmas tradition, or 2) Your favorite thing to bake for the holidays. Leave a recipe, too, if you want! I’ll let Random.org pick a winner for me on Sunday, November 8, at 8:00 central time.
PS – The winner of The Princess and the Three Knights was #13, MF
Thank you to ZonderKids Publishing! They sent me 2 copies of The Gift of the Christmas Cookie: one to review, and one to give away.
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My favorite Christmas tradition is driving around after church on Christmas Eve and looking at all of the lights. I’m pretty sure my Dad started this “tradition” because we were driving him crazy, but I’ve always loved it and now do it with my own son.
We love to bake a loaf of homemade bread and deliver it (sometimes with some jelly) to each of our neighbors. It makes our house smell delicious while blessing our neighbors!
Thanks for the giveaway! I love my mom’s 7 Layer Cookies. She always makes them and gives some to me, knowing I’ll ask for them anyway!
What a great review–I’m going to have to buy this book if I don’t win it of course. Our family tradition is on December 1st I present my 2 children with 24 books (all wrapped up). Each evening 1 child gets to choose the book and we read that book for the evening. This serves as our countdown calendar to christmas. This also gives the children 24 new books.
I would love to read this book with my kiddos! As a family one of our favorite traditions is going through the linage of Christ from creation to birth using The Jesse Tree… My kids look forward to “hanging the next ornament” every night!
Christmas cookies are a HUGE tradition for my family – we have recipes that have been passed down from my great-great-grandmother and even some new favorites like this one on my recipe blog: http://catherinesrecipes.blogspot.com/2008/12/chocolate-orange-cookies.html
We spend hours upon hours in the kitchen baking and chatting and enjoying the company of family. Those cookies are definitely baked with love! This book sounds amazing and would be a wonderful addition to our tradition!
Our favorite tradition is to set a small manger (little basket) filled with hay (rafia) under our Christmas tree and on Christmas morning there is baby Jesus (a doll) wrapped in cloth lying in it. My children run to see the basket first instead of their presents. I love that they are focused on Jesus rather than getting the gifts.
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http://www.hopechestofwisdom.blogspot.com
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I have a couple favorite traditions, my Dad passed away in 1980 but I remember that he would always put the shiny ornaments on the bottom of the tree then when we were done we would lay under the tree and look at ourselves in them. We also love to have a baking day or two during the CHRISTmas season, I love making 7-layer coconut bars and peanut butter fudge (I’m not very good at the fudge but I love to eat it) Have a great day!
my favorite Christmas tradition and memory is my parents and us five daughters piling into the car to drive around and look at all of the lights Christmas night….we had 4 of us in the backseat, but it was well worth the close family time!
~eunice b
rsmile2u @dejazzd .com
My favorite tradition is getting out the artificial tree that we used my whole childhood and that my mom gave to me a few years ago. It has a certain pleasant smell that I just love and really gets me in the spirit. (I know, how can a plastic tree have a good smell?!? But it does!) Thanks for the chance, Amy! I just figured out that we have a couple ZonderKids books and Goose loves them!
Christmas Cookies. Specifically Sugar cookies. I bake them, my husband and daughter steal them off the cooling rack before I have a chance to frost them
My mom used to make a pastry at Christmas – peach flips. I sure miss her (and them).
favorite cooking tradition: oyster stew on christmas eve.
Oh how I love the tradition of baking and giving at Christmas. My earliest memories of baking were when my mom would, only at Christmas, buy a few rolls of the “slice and bake” cookies. We would love to eat the raw dough, and slice the sugar cookies and decorate with colored sugars! I later learned that cookies didn’t have to come from a roll, and I have loved the days spent baking all sorts of goodies and then making up plates to deliver to our neighbors, many of whom we don’t see throughout the year. My favorite: my mother in law’s Rocky Road cookies. My hubby loves Snickerdoodles. My son loves Chocolate Cookies with Peanut butter chips. My older sons love the Peanut Butter Blossoms with the Kiss in the middle. Funny thing, on year, I left them overnight on the freezer to set. When I got up to run the next morning, I could see all the periphery cookies were gone. Ready to get my boys, they all denied, and I realized our Chocolate Lab had nibbled on a treat he found, and taken, one by one!!! Still makes us laugh!!
My favorite things to bake are christmas cookies (homemade sugar cookies to decorate) and gingerbread. My favorite thing that doesn’t require baking to make is either fudge or peanut butter balls. I love Christmas and my little boy is two this year and we have a new baby so we are really looking forward to the holidays this year!
My favorite tradition is that we give 3 gifts to each person in our family. One representing Gold (something that the receiver will love)
Myrrh (Something for the receiver’s body)
Frankincense (something to enhance the receiver’s spiritual walk).
My favorite tradition is that we always read Luke 2 on Christmas morning before we open any presents or do anything else. We read Luke 2 and say a prayer. My father started this when I was a child and I’ve passed it on to my family.
One of my favorite traditions from my side of the family is collecting ornaments that somehow represent Jesus (or somehow come from a Bible story). Then we sit around the Christmas tree together, and each pick an ornament and tell what it means to us. (Example: Jesus said “I am the vine” and we have grapes on our tree. The Bible says, “though your sin be as scarlet, it shall be white as snow.” We have snowflakes, too!) It helps to keep our holiday Christ-centered.
My favorite tradition is singing while my sis plays the piano. Doesn’t happen often enough these days…
What a wonderful story! I love to bake cookies and treats at Christmas, myself. One of my favorites is an old fashion sugar cookie from Martha Stewart. A family tradition though is to make gingerbread houses. I’ve made them every year since I can remember and am excited to share that experience with my kids!
My favorite Christmas cookie is mexican wedding cakes. My mom only makes them for Christmas and they are such a treat!
My favorite tradition is driving around to see the lights on Christmas Eve. We the head home for hot chocolate, cookies and a Christmas movie.
We also love to get together as a family & bake some goodies. My favorite is the chocolate dipping! Try spreading peanut butter on one ritz cracker & mashmallow creme on another cracker. Stick the two together & dip in melted chocolate. See if you can wait till they firm up before you eat them! They’re the best!
My favorite thing to bake at Christmas is cookies! Sounds like a great book!
My favorite Christmas tradition is that our whole family gets together for Christmas Eve. We have dinner, sing carols, visit and then we all open one present from my parents and it is always new pj’s to sleep in!
My favorite Christmas goodies are buckeyes and toffee! YUM!
My favorite Christmas tradition is being with family! I love that warm feeling of everyone being together–whether we are eating goodies, driving around looking at Christmas lights, going to church, or playing games. This book sounds awesome!
Family tradition is setting up the manager seen.
Would love to read this book!!
My favorite Christmas tradition is Christmas Eve at my parents house. When we were kids, we had to clean the whole house before supper. Then we would enjoy a candle light pizza meal together, read the Christmas story, sing some songs, and then give gifts. We still do everything except clean my mom’s house
But we still help her make the pizzas. There’s nothing quite like homemade pizza on Christmas Eve.
I love to snuggle on the couch with my girls, the fire place burning, in front of the Christmas tree reading Christmas books.
My favorite thing to bake for the holidays are loads and loads of cookies, candy, and fudge. Then I give it ALL away!!! People start asking in October to make sure I am doing it. Lots of demand LOL! My favorite cookies are oatmeal craisins, white choc chip.
My grandma always made homemade chocolate covered cherries, turtles and chocolate covered maple cremes. After she died, I took up the tradition and made it my own. I’ve added a few new flavors of cremes and we now give them to our mailman, church staff and friends as well as enjoy them at our family Christmas party. My mouth is watering just thinking about them. I really don’t crave chocolate except around Christmas!
That book sounds terrific. If I don’t win, I’ll for sure have to add it to my wanted list.
Growing up my favorite tradition was going caroling to shut-ins and of course taking them a tray of cookies!
My favorite Christmas tradition is reading Luke 2 with the family before opening gifts. I love the solemnity of the moment, and the reminder of the amazing Gift of love that was sent for us.
My favorite Christmas tradition is making cookies for our neighbors, and planning random little surprises for friends and family throughout the month. Definitely my favorite time of year!
If I have to pick just one tradition I would say going to Christmas Eve Mass. After church each child is allowed to open the “sibling” gifts. It’s great fun to watch them open up gifts that they have chosen for each other.
We actually have a list of what we bake every year, and occasionally add to it, but my favorite is Buche de Noel! I make chocolate and vanilla, and between Christmas and New Years make a total of about 6.
decorating the Christmas tree is a favorite… I love the effect of all those lights!
Ahhh this sounds like a great book! Our favorite Christmas tradition is having a fondue. Yum!!
My favorite thing to bake during the holidays is cheesecake- cinnamon, pumpkin, NY style, doesn’t matter to me as long as I get a piece. Every year on Christmas Eve the kids and I bake cookies for Santa (and some for ourselves, of course), we make hot chocolate with marshmallows, I read How the Grinch Stole Christmas and ‘Twas the Night Before Christmas to them, while they are sipping on their drinks and nibbling on their cookies, and then we put Santa’s cookies on our Cookies For Santa plate, pour some milk, and leave out 8 mini carrots (reindeer get hungry, too!). Then the kids get to open one present each, which is usally a new pair of PJ’s so they look good in their Christmas photos and we say our prayers and tuck them in bed.
My favorite cookie is a pinwheel that my mom makes…yummy nut filling in a sour cream/cream cheese dough…it isn’t very sweet which is my favorite part. I’m not sure where she got the recipe, but it just doesn’t feel like Christmas unless I have them.
I love to bake Christmas cookies and make lots of goodies with my kids on our special baking day. This would be a wonderful story to share with them.
I love teaching Sunday School during Advent. My favorite cookie recipe is so easy
1 chocolate cake mix
2 eggs
1 stick butter melted
M&M and 1/2 bag chocolate chips.
Roll dough into 1 inch balls and bake at 350 for 10 minutes.
When my grandmother was alive and we all met at her house, cookies, cakes, and all kinds of candy were made and shared. I remember it was a family tradition for our family to make a fresh coconut cake. Dad would open the eyes to drain the milk and then crack it with a hammer. Everyone would work to get the fresh coconut out of the shell. The icing took 3 of us to make. One holding the pans for double boiler, one with mixer and one with the clock for timing. Thanks for the memories.
When I was a child, my mother didn’t put up our Christmas tree until after we were in bed on Christmas Eve. We were so surprised on Christmas morning. Since her family was from Lithuania, the eastern European tradition was to leave the tree up until January 6, or King’s Day. That is the day that the wisemen brought their gifts to the baby Jesus.
Oh, I must have this book. I’ll be out shopping for it if it doesn’t come my way from you!
One of our favourite traditions is to decorate the tree. On it we have two special ornaments from Uganda that represent our foster children there. For five years, we have kept the gift giving to only our children in order to a) focus on more important things, like sponsoring Derrick and Isabella b) reduce the pure craziness of buying and receiving so many unnecessary gifts, c) allow extended family to send money instead of gifts (so the kids know what it’s like to in turn give it away). The ornaments on the tree go on with a prayer and an appreciation for what’s important. And the kids have never loved Christmas more!
My favorite Christmas tradition is the hanging of the lights and the Christmas tree. I then know Christmas is here.
Then we gather the family, wrap them in blankets, and go looking at all the lights. It is such fun!
It would definitely be getting the tree and decorating it. It is so fun and really says its Christmas! And we also love to play Christmas music- not until after Thanksgiving though
My favorite tradition would be decorating the Christmas tree with my children.
My favorite tradition is going to look at Christmas lights with the family on Christmas Day and watching the Childrens’ Christmas Program at church.
My favourite tradition is baking piles and piles of recipes and making them into plates and bringing them wherever we go – to the neighbours, to Christmas gatherings, to church, wherever! I love being able to share with others and giving them lots of yummy things to choose from. My favourite recipe is for almond stick – its a really complicated family recipe, but it tastes sooo good!
Cookies…I have a new favorite since I met my sister-in-law. She makes these wonderful shortbread raspeberry filled addictions. She sometimes surprises me with them at my birthday–the only time outside of Christmas they grace her kitchen.
Making Gingerbread houses is my favorite tradition–making kits for the homeless shelter families to enjoy on Christmas day has me excited all year. What a wonderful thing to be thankful for–Baking and easy access to flour and sugar.
My favorite thing to bake for Christmas is fudge or mint squares.
I love holiday baking–the house smells so nice and inviting!! It definitely helps to offset the stress of Christmas shopping. My favorite recipe to make is Stollen. Many stollens in our area bakeries use the artificially colored candied fruit, so I choose to make my own with actual dried fruit and a little lemon zest for brightness. The best part is that stollen can be made a day or two in advance and eaten on Christmas morning.
I bake a cake recipe found in a newsletter several years ago for my family every year. In fact my sister REQUESTS it for Christmas Day. I will be sharing the recipe again on my blog in December (posted about it last year too). This has also become a tradition, which is neat.
One of my family traditions with the kids is dinner at home Christmas Eve then playing games together.
Would LOVE to read the book, thanks for offering such a sweet giveaway.
My favorite Christmas tradition is baking cookies! Every time it starts snowing I try to bake cookies! My daughters favorite Christmas memory is the smell of cookies baking while it is snowing out
My favorite cookie is a soft sugar cookie. Frosting is not always needed. 
Sounds like a great book! I love Christmas traditions, some of my favorites are driving around looking at holiday lights, walking around our neighborhood on Christmas Eve when the luminarias are lit, and leaving cookies for Santa.
I love sitting in the living room with the Christmas tree glowing each night during the month of December and listening to Christmas music, it’s such a happy time!
What a cool concept. My kids would love this book. My favorite Christmas tradition is decorating the tree. I always do it Thanksgiving weekend with Christmas music playing in the background. We go an pick out a live tree as a family and it is just always a special time.
My favorite Christmas tradition is that every year on Christmas Eve, my hubby, me, his siblings and his parents all go to the Dollar Store. His dad gives us each enough money to cover a $1 present for each person there, and tax. We sneak around the store hiding our gifts for each other, purchase them, and then go home and give them. Most of them end up being goofy gag gifts, but since they’re only $1 not much is wasted, and the fun that comes from it is well worth the cost. I’ve also received some practical things like table cloths, hand soap, candles etc. The pictures from this are always priceless, last year my SIL gave me a tiara and some chunky earings that I put on while coddling the baby doll that my husband gave me.
My favorite thing to bake is pumpkin bread and give it to our neighbors and friends
I always make my mint chocolate brownies. They are safe for my daughter with food allergies and are a family favorite. For some reason, it has become a holiday tradition since I only make it at Thanksgiving. I think because it is a long process.
I also love to make pumpkin muffins, or mini loaves of this to give away as gifts in a cute little tin or ceramic dish.
I realize it is not baking, but it is something that is very special to my children and me. I was raised by grandparents who held on to all the old ways of living simple. I grew up making fresh cranberry relish with a cast iron grinder that was my great grandmothers. It even has a broken spoke. It was something that I thought was so delicious and it was only made at Thanksgiving and Christmas. When I took over the cooking of the holiday dinners, I received the grinder and now my children use the same grinder to make the relish attached to the same hoosier cabinet and eat from the same dining room table as I did and my grandmother did. It is a treasured piece of my life with my Grama. As the kids got older I thought they wouldn’t care about it as much as I did, so one year I started the cranking and my 15 year old son asked what was I doing? That is their job. He says his children will use it too. sniff sniff
I love Christmas morning, both my parents & my husbands parents come over and we all eat breakfast together and then watch the kids open their presents.
I LOVE making toffee for the holidays! Just standing at the stove watching sugar and butter magically meld in to this wonderful treat is magical for me!
We love the music and hearing Dad read the Christmas story.
Now my children are also enjoying themes for giving. Last year we all found something used for a gift and it took the money emphasis off of the gift giving. They loved it. They also love the “stocking gifts” best or the last gift to open(it’s the cheap and usually funny one) that Grandma puts in a glass sleigh on her dinner table.
I love making pumpkin and butterscotch cookies.
For the past eight or so years, we’ve been having a cookie decorating day with my mom on the Saturday after Thanksgiving. When we started, we were not parents yet…we now have a three kids (7,5 & 3) and the two older ones really enjoy this time – and I imagine the 3-year old will also have a blast this year
I think my favorite Christmas tradtion is the advent calendar. We have one with tiny drawers in it and sometheres there is a small piece of candy or other times a little slip of paper reminding us about the real meaning of Christmas.
My favorite tradition is our noodle/pie making day with my SILs and MIL. Every year we pitch in and bring ingredients for several favorite pies and noodles. It is a nice time do something together and start on the Christmas meal by making noodles and pies to freeze.
Our favorite family Christmas tradition is making fudge, divinity and decorating sugar cookies and then ending the day sitting down watching all the Christmas cartoons like Rudolph and Frosty with just the lights from our Christmas tree on. Would love to win this book and add reading it to our tradition. Thank you for the giveaway.
koinonia572001@yahoo.com
one of my favorite traditions is (starting Dec. 1st) reading one christmas story or article each night with the family until Christmas. We wrap up 25 books and each night the kids take turns picking one to unwrap and read. This would be a great book to add to the collection!
OU favorite tradition is baking cookies and giving them away for Christmas. This book sounds wonderful. Tks for the chance.
Melissa
My favorite thing to bake is pumpkin bread. My favorite childhood memory is going to church on Christmas Eve night, being part of the Christmas play, and ending the service singing Silent Night with only candles to light the way.
My favorite thing to bake for Christmas are cookies!! I love plain sugar cookies, with frosting, sprinkles and other decorations.
My favorite christmas tradition is the family getting together and putting the christmas tree up; with holiday music playing…
In our family we wake up super early in the morning and travel to whoever is hosting that day, then we spend ALL day with our extended family! I love getting the chance to really talk to them and find out how their year went.
We make cream cheese mints every year to give to friends and neighbors. They turn out soft and creamy and delicious, and are super easy too!
Oh Christmas my favorite time of the year.My husband and I have 5 children and have had many foster children in our family and Christmas was always the best.One of our family traditions was that about 2 weeks before Christmas we would bake and decorate our cut out cookies and when they were all done the boys and I would deliver them to all of our neighbors and share our good wishes to everyone.Being boys they sometimes would get into a little trouble with some of the neighbors but when we delivered cookies the boys would see that all was well and that the neighbors had forgiven them,this gave the boys a new out look and come nicer weather they always seemed to be a little more careful,all from just sharing a cookie.
I use my cookie press to make John 3:16 cookies for the kids in my boys’ classes at Christmas. A red heart, yellow star, the figure 8 shape is the sleeping baby wrapped in cloths with 2 brown sprinkles for eyes and a red one for His little mouth. I put them in a baggy with the verse on a red paper with line drawings of the cookies where they appear in the verse. Some years I have made a “world” cookie with blue frosting for the water.
When we were kids, we would sing christmas songs and than open our presents at midnight on christmas eve. We always were at a family members house. I also loved baking cookies prior to christmas. It was always a great time with family and friends.
Charna
My favorite things to make are pumpkin and banana breads.
Our Chrsitmas tradition is to gather around in the living room on Christmaas Eve and watch National Lampoon’s Chrsitmas Vacation. We know it by heart and all have our favorite parts, which we recite as it plays.
I love to having a cookie baking day with just the women from my church. My family is far away, so I have built the tradition with my sisters in Christ!
My favorite tradition is making Homemade Raviolis with our family! It is fun and yummy!
martha(at)lclink(dot)com
I am in London, England, and a long-standing tradition here is Christmas Cake. Mine is my great-grandmother’s recipe (and hers was surely passed down from generations above her). These are rich fruit cakes which are made in November (or ever earlier if you’re organised enough!) because they need to mature for a month or so before decorating. A few weeks before Christmas it’s time to cover them with marzipan (which then needs to dry out for a couple of weeks), and a few days before Christmas you ice them with royal icing and whatever decorations on top. I can’t imagine Christmas without Christmas Cake! We’re making the Christmas Cakes this weekend. I’m so excited!!!
We have so many traditions this time of year. At work, I usually draw a needy child’s name for a gift. My daughter and I go shopping for the gift (and she gets nothing during this trip) to remind her that the holidays are not all about her and it is good to help others any time of the year.
safety_chick@hotmail.com
My favorite tradition is setting up the Christmas tree with carols playing in the background.
I like making cookies and candies and delivering them to our friends and neighbors. We also like to go see all the lights and decorations in our neighborhood.
I LOVE to bake with my boys at Christmas. Our favorite – Snickerdoodles – simple, but delicious!
I have never heard of this book. It sounds wonderful and I’d love to win a copy! My favorite thing to bake at Christmas is the standard sugar cookie cutouts. The thing that makes it my favorite is baking and decorating them with my kiddos! I will treasure these memories forever!
My favorite christmas tradition is to listen to christmas music in front of the fireplace after dinner
Spritz cookies are my favorite to make. This year I have a diabetic husband, and will start some new sugar-free traditions!
Thanks for the giveaway – it is fun to read the comments!
My favorite tradition my family does is making sugar and different chocolate candies with my family.
My favorite tradition is baking a birthday cake for Jesus with my girls.
My favorite family tradition is trying to outsmart my dad on Christmas morning. When we were young he built a motion sensor with a loud horn and put it at the top of the stairs, guarding the the tree and Santa’s presents. The “snoop stopper” has evolved over the years and we’ve done everything from jump banisters to avoid the sensor, tape over the sensor, and set up ladders outside so we can get out and come in an unguarded door. Us kids work out the plan and terrorize my dad with our confidence that we will win the battle that year. My siblings and I range in age from 17 to 28 and we still love this battle with my dad. Silly, I know. But priceless.
I love the fireplace at Christmas. We decorate ours with stockings and fresh greenery and lights and we usually have a wood fire going. It’s my favorite place to be!
i love to bake peanutbutter cookies with a hershey’s kiss in them.
please pick me!
One of my favorite Christmas traditions is being the first to wake up on Christmas morning, and working with my sister to prepare breakfast for our family before the hustle and bustle of gift opening begins.
My favorite Christmas tradition is making date nut pinwheel cookies with my Grandma!
Our household loves Christmas baking every year.
Christine
My favorite Christmas tradition is new pajamas on Christmas Eve.
One of my favorite traditions is appetizer night on Christmas Eve…really fun food…
Thanks for this book giveaway. It looks great!
Some of my favorite traditions are decorating for Christmas with lots of fairy lights indoors and fake or real greenery, reading the old faithful Christmas short stories, watching It’s a Wonderful Life, and putting electric candles in the windows. This year I want to have a tiny bedroom tree for my lovey and me.
I love to bake shaped sugar cookies because they’re my sons favorites.
Actually, I did know that but I am a holiday nut. That is a lovely book. As for traditions, I have always said give me cookies, and midnight Mass and my Christmas is complete. Of course every year my schedule is way more ambitious. We all seem to bite off a little more than we can chew over the holidays.
Thanks for sharing a review of this lovely book.
One of my favorite traditions is appetizer night on Christmas Eve…really fun food…
Thanks for this book giveaway. It looks great!