Baker's Dozen: 13 Quick and Easy Christmas Cookies

Look, I'm not going to judge you for waiting til right now to start your Christmas cookie baking. I understand that stuff happens.

What I want to do is enable you to make delicious magic for yourself and all your friends, so I have assembled this list of 13 easy, quick, and highly delicious Christmas cookies. You might not be able to make all of them, but at least choose a couple! 

1. Snowballs: no matter what you wanna call them, they're an easy, classic, and best of all, crowd-pleasing cookie.

2. Nanaimo bars: Seriously. I can't believe you haven't made these yet!

3. Gingerbread Nanaimo bars: the aforementioned everyday classic gets a holiday makeover. Yum!

4. Pistachio cookies: a personal favorite of mine, and a "lost" recipe I revived from family archives.

5. Christmas Kaleidoscope cookies: Taste the rainbow...or, you know, many holiday hues at once.

6. Berlinerkranser: I believe the official translation is "highly tasty cookie".

7. Gingerbread men: or, make them look like characters from a TV show: Gingerbread Mad Men!

8. Candy cane cookies: This is such a nostalgic cookie - give it a try if you've never made them.

9. Jam thumbprints: another classic, these ones are bound to please a crowd. Nutty and with a touch of fruit from the jam, so that means they're health food.

10. Mint candy butter cookies: Great for cookie swaps, or just stuffing in your mouth (let's be honest).

11. Eggnog Nanaimo bars! Seriously. A great accompaniment when you're sloggin' some nog.

12. Baby buche de noel cookies: not to who off, BUT, I contributed this adorable recipe to Food and Wine.

13. Red and green christmas cookies: like black and white cookies...but green and red! Festive!

While you're baking, kill time waiting for cookies to bake by reading about the first published Christmas cookie recipe in America, and the history of the tradition of Christmas cookies.

Season's sweetings!