Merry Christmas!

Editor's Note: Our little photoshopped Christmas card photo, shown below, probably depicts how much I love Christmas. However, I didn't always feel that way. I wrote this fun piece for my newspaper last year, and thought it resonates just as much now as it did when I wrote it. I'm sharing it here today.

Also, have a great Christmas. Spend time with family and enjoy yourself! That's an order. ;)

I’ll admit it. I’m a recovering Christmas Scrooge.

I never had an outright dislike for the holiday. It was a more gradual burnout of Christmas overload each year.

Since when did it become a month long monstrosity, filled with stale cookies, annoying songs, forced smiles and gingerbread houses that you’re supposedly not allowed to eat?

It all sounded like hell to me.

The loathing probably began in my adolescence, after the magic of receiving presents dulled, and family gatherings began to feel too routine.

Worst of all for me were all of those stop-motion specials playing repeatedly on television. You know, the ones where all the characters are made of clay. Those movies were the proverbial fingernails on the chalkboard. Anytime one came on, I cringed. I don’t know if there was ever a time I enjoyed them, even in childhood. At least, until now.

But in October (2013), I got married to my boyfriend of almost six years, Mark. Unlike me, he can’t get enough of Christmas.

While he was in graduate school, he decorated the living room of his bachelor pad apartment with an entire set of two-foot tall holiday-themed Peanuts characters, complete with Charlie Brown, Snoopy and Woodstock. He didn’t have the heart to put them away until spring. Seriously.

It doesn’t help that Mark is the embodiment of a Santa in his younger years. He prides himself on his thick, dark beard. Also, he’s a little rounder in the middle. Paired with his affinity for the holiday and his charisma with others, especially children, he could be a believable Santa Claus someday. Despite the bigger, burly man he is, he’s probably more like Cindy Lou in this story, trying to convert the Grinch.

His slow conversion of me began innocuously. Stressing the importance of tree decoration came first. Fluffing the branches is key to a realistic aesthetic with a fake tree, he said. Evenly distributing the ornaments was important, too.

But decorating a tree just to take it down in a few weeks seemed like an unnecessary chore. I let him do most of the work at least for awhile.

Then came the stream of must-see movies. “The Year Without a Santa Claus” was Mark’s favorite. It’s one of those claymation movies I have gotten annoyed with so much. I’d let him put the movie on, but I usually can’t sit all the way through it.

I have always been more of a “Home Alone” kind of girl, anyway. And I could almost always relate to the defiant words of Kevin McCallister: Christmas sucks.

Meanwhile, Mark’s mother, a skilled baker, began giving me tips on how to make the best holiday cookies — there is a difference between melted and softened butter after all. Also, I could see where Mark got his spirit.

Each year, his mother decorated the house with lights in every room, multiple trees with hundreds of ornaments, and stacks upon stacks of cookies, biscotti and homemade candies on trays. I could go on about other details — the wreaths, the neatly wrapped presents, the train set with a neighborhood of miniature houses under the tree.

Any time between Thanksgiving and New Year’s, going to his parents’ house was like visiting a live-action Christmas card. It wasn’t forced, but intricately done. I could see why Mark loved it.

This year, something strange happened. I found myself getting eager to put up the tree, and wanting to pull down childhood ornaments from the attic I hadn’t seen in years.

I couldn’t stop baking cookies either. Trying out new recipes kind of became an involuntary tick. Multiple batches of gingerbread, snickerdoodles and sugar cookie dough began piling up in the refrigerator.

I even designed my own Christmas card for family and friends. It was simple. Using Photoshop and a wedding photo, I edited a Santa hat onto each of our heads. I made Mark’s hat red. Mine was green. Guess it doesn’t take much to make things festive.

It seemed like the Christmas spirit was becoming contagious.

Even the stop-motion movies became fresh again. I hadn’t watched one of those all the way through in so long that I had forgotten what they were all about.

Perhaps that’s what happened to me and Christmas. I was so quick to dismiss old traditions that I wasn’t able to relax and fully enjoy the love that had always surrounded me. I don’t think my heart was ever two sizes too small, but I do think love was the one constant that converted me into a believer again. I’m already excited for next year.

Gingerbread Cookies

Note: I recently asked bloggers to share some of their favorite Christmas cookie recipes, along with memories of making them, with the hopes it could be an online version of a Christmas cookie exchange party.

Today's recipe is from yours truly, with a holiday classic: Gingerbread cookies!

If there's a kind of cookie out there that's synonymous with Christmastime, it has to be gingerbread.

As a kid, I always loved getting the gingerbread house kits sold at stores, complete with the thick, rectangular pieces, generic gumdrops in plastic baggies, and the glue-like icing to hold it together. Somehow I would always have selective amnesia after Christmas, thinking the gingerbread house was going to taste awesome after sitting out and getting stale for weeks.

This same thing happened a couple years ago, when childhood reminisce got the best of me and I couldn't resist buying a kit. I had been duped with stale, cardboard tasting gingerbread. AGAIN.

To combat these gingerbread atrocities, or just the fact that I wanted to make gingerbread myself, I made this kind of cookie from scratch for the first time last year. The process is about the same with cutout sugar cookies; the dough is best to work with when refrigerated overnight. It's a detail I almost always forget.

Anyway, I made this particular batch of cookies last week to bring to a little work Christmas potluck, and they were the first thing to go.

Mark also contends it's the best gingerbread he's had, with the perfect balance tang and sweetness. That means a lot, considering he's the biggest food snob I know. (I love him dearly, but his mom spoiled him with confections growing up. She had her own baking business at one point.)

Besides molasses being pretty hard to come by in the store this time of year, this recipe was pretty easy. I might also lighten up on the baking powder, since my men puffed out a bit more than expected.

But I think that smelling these through the house and tasting them is something I would like to do each year. If I were to make only only holiday cookie each year (though doubtful), I think this one would be it. Anyway, enjoy!

Gingerbread Cookies
Recipe via The Taste of Home

Yields about 18 cookies

Ingredients:

• 2/3 cup shortening
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 1/4 cup molasses
• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1 teaspoon baking soda
• 1 teaspoon salt
• 1 teaspoon each ground cinnamon, cloves and ginger
• red and green sugar (optional)

Directions:

In a large bowl, cream shortening and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in egg and molasses. Combine flour, baking soda, salt and spices; gradually add to the creamed mixture and mix well. Refrigerate for 2 hours or overnight.

On a lightly floured surface, roll dough to about a quarter inch thickness. Cut with a floured cookie cutter into desired shapes. Place two inches apart on baking sheets. (I swear by parchment paper!)

Bake at 350 degrees for 8 to 10 minutes or until edges begin to brown. Remove from pans to cool on wire racks.

This recipe also list a buttercream frosting to use, but I think the cookies taste great as is. Personally, I doubled the recipe so we'd have these cookies for awhile. I also have a preference for these with a softness in the middle, rather than a crunch, so I don't leave them in as long.

Laura's Saltine Toffee

Note from Kate: I recently asked bloggers to share some of their favorite Christmas cookie recipes, along with memories of making them, with the hopes it could be an online version of a Christmas cookie exchange party. Today's recipe comes from Laura, of The Pittsburgh Kitchen, who is actually my real-life friend!

I've gotten some great cooking ideas and tips from her over the last few years, and this saltine toffee she made sounds like the most satisfying salty-sweet combo. Enjoy!

Recently, I've suffered through a series of baking fails. Not just once but two or three times I've unsuccessfully creamed butter and sugar - this is something I've done without problems many many times, but apparently I'm off my game. Then the other night my friend Sarah came over and I wanted to make these cookies, which call for vanilla pudding mix. I texted Sarah to bring some, but I didn't add any explanation so, not surprisingly, Sarah very kindly brought actual, prepared pudding packs. Just so you know, you cannot substitute prepared pudding for pudding mix. Not good.

You might notice that Saltine Toffee is not actually a cookie and is in fact only barely a baked good at all. Perfect for the inexperienced or formerly-acceptable-but-currently-terrible baker! So I'll be bringing these to Christmas this year, and everyone is going to love them because they are extremely delicious.

Saltine Toffee

Ingredients:
• 2 sticks (1 cup) butter
• 1 cup brown sugar
• 1 1/2 sleeves Saltines, maybe about 50 crackers
• 2 cups chocolate chips (all chocolate or mixed with white, butterscotch or peanut butter)
• 1 cup crushed pecans, toasted (or crushed heath bars, Oreos, maybe pretzels?)
• a couple pinches of sea salt, optional

Directions:

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Cover a baking sheet with aluminum foil and coat it with cooking spray (or just thinly spread some vegetable oil around with a paper towel like I usually do rather than ever buy cooking spray). Arrange the Saltines tightly on the baking sheet, fitting in as many as you can.

Melt the butter in a saucepan. Once it's completely melted, add the brown sugar and stir occasionally until the sugar is dissolved and the mixture is bubbly and a little thickened. Pour the mixture over the Saltines and bake it in the oven for 8 minutes.

Take the baking sheet out and scatter the chocolate chips over the toffee-covered crackers. Put it back in the over for another 2 minutes. When you take them out, spread the chocolate out with a butter knife or thin spatula. Sprinkle the nuts on top, sprinkle with some sea salt if you want, and let cool until set. Then break it up into pieces and eat!

Thanks, Laura!

Below, you'll see her adorable dog Twilly, who is pretty much the face of The Pittsburgh Kitchen. And below that is a picture of Laura and I at my wedding last year. :)