Baking cookies during the Christmas season can be a fun project for both kids and adults. Whether you’re baking for a Christmas cookie exchange, your kid’s classroom, gifts for family and friends, or just for sweets to enjoy yourself, these butter cookies will certainly be a hit.

Butter Cookie Christmas Cutouts
Ingredients
1 cup of butter
1 1/2 cups of sifted powdered sugar
1 egg
1 teaspoon of vanilla
2 1/2 cups of sifted flour
1 teaspoon of cream of tartar
1 teaspoon of baking soda
1/4 teaspoon of salt

Directions
Cream butter, add sugar gradually and cream until fluffy. Add unbeaten egg and
vanilla; beat well. Sift together dry ingredients; blend into cream mixture. Chill dough
about an hour. Roll on well floured pastry board to 1/4 inch thickness. Cut with floured
cutter. Bake on an unbuttered cookie sheet for 6 minutes at 325 degrees.

Poinsettias are a flowering plant indigenous to southern Mexico and Central America, but they’ve become a common symbol of Christmas in America and around the world. How did this bright red plant become associated with the holidays?

According to Wikipedia, the plant’s association with Christmas began in Mexico in the 16th century, where legend tells of a young girl who was too poor to provide a gift for the celebration of Jesus’ birthday. The tale goes that the child was inspired by an angel to gather weeds from the roadside and place them in front of the church altar. Crimson “blossoms” sprouted from the weeds and became beautiful poinsettias.

Poinsettias, known as the Christmas Eve Flower (Flor de Buena Noche) in Mexico, slowly became associated with the celebration of Christ’s birth. The plant’s star-shaped leaf pattern is said to symbolize the Star of Bethlehem, and the red color represents the blood sacrifice through the crucifixion of Jesus. Franciscan friars in Mexico started including the plants in their Christmas celebrations in the 17th century, and the plants came to the United States in 1825.

They were introduced here by Joel Roberts Poinsett, an amateur botanist and the first United States Minister to Mexico, and that’s how the plants, whose scientific name is Euphorbia pulcherrima, came to be known as poinsettias.

Their rise in popularity in the United States and around the world was promoted by the Ecke family of California, which started selling the plants in the early 1900s and developed a way of grafting poinsettias to make a fuller, more compact plant. This secret allowed them to have a virtual monopoly on the poinsettia market until the 1990s. They also promoted the plants by sending free poinsettias to TV stations to display on air and by appearing on programs like The Tonight Show and Bob Hope’s Christmas specials.

Today the association between poinsettias and Christmas is well established and will undoubtedly be with us for a long time to come.

It’s been a holiday tradition to burn a Yule log even before there was a Christmas. It signifies that it is time for friends and family to gather near for songs, stories and fun, and until the Yule log burns out, there’s no more working.

In its beginnings, the Yule log was burned as a celebration of the winter solstice. Yule ran from several weeks before the winter solstice to a couple weeks after in Scandinavia, as this was the coldest and darkest time of the year. And though the Yule log is named from this Scandinavian tradition, the practice of burning a special log during the winter months was a tradition in many countries across the world.

When Pope Julius I decided to celebrate Christmas around the time of the Winter Solstice during the fourth century, the Yule log tradition continued, but the light from the burning log represented the light of the Savior instead of the light of the sun.

Traditionally on or about Christmas Eve, a big log was brought into the home or a larger gathering place. People would sing and tell stories while children danced and played. The log was even decorated, and food and wine were placed upon it as offerings. It was also a way of starting the New Year with a fresh start as a person’s mistakes and shortcomings were burned in the flame of the log. Songs were sung and stories told. Children danced. Offerings of food and wine and decorations were placed upon it. The log was never allowed to burn completely; leftover pieces of it were kept in the house to start next years log and also to bring good luck to the home. It was believed those pieces would protect the home from fire, lightning or other acts of nature. Ashes of the log would be placed in wells to keep the water good and spread at the roots of trees, vines and sprinkled upon gardens and crops to ensure a good harvest.