You Have My Permission To Bake One Batch Of Christmas Cookies This Year. Or, Maybe None At All

On Sunday, I set out to bake pfeffernusse. They’re little round spice cookies, covered with powdered sugar, and a tradition in Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark, as well as the United States.

After I’d baked a couple of dozen, I waited for them to cool, and rolled each one in a plate of icing sugar. Then, I stopped.

I brushed the sugar off my black Eileen Fisher dress (pro tip: don’t wear black when you make pfeffernusse), boxed up the cookies, and left the kitchen. My Christmas cookie baking for 2020 was finished.

Instead of the four or five kinds, or even more that I tasked myself with in past years, I decided to bake only one type of cookie this year.

This essay is your permission to do the same — and to change any type of holiday tradition that you always have followed.

Don’t get me wrong. I love Christmas cookies. I eagerly read the recipes in the annual Chicago Tribune cookie contest. I have a wooden box filled with my mother’s holiday recipes that I normally haul out every year.

I admire Melissa Clark for presenting such a great cookie box idea. And the wedding cookie tables of Pittsburgh are absolutely enthralling.