December 4 is National Cookie Day!

Originally written on December 4, 2021 – Updated 2023

Cookies are sweet and made with all sorts of delicious goodness, from butter, nuts to fruit to every kind of chocolate.
They can be either delightfully crumbly or chewy, and not to mention that they keep for years if they are stored properly.
Ok.
This may not actually be true but, honestly, they will probably never last long enough to find out.
In any case, there’s no doubt about it: cookies more than deserve their own day, and that’s why National Cookie Day is celebrated around the world in order to pay tribute to these delicious treats.
So grab some flour, butter, and sugar, and let’s get to celebrating!

In America, a cookie is described as a thin, sweet, small cake, and each country has its own word for “cookie”.
In England and Australia they’re referred to as biscuits, in Spain they’re galletas, while Germans call them keks and in Italy they have several names to identify the various forms of cookie.
In America, the Dutch word “koekje” was Anglicized to “cookie”, as the sweet treat came to America through the Dutch in New Amsterdam in the late 1620s.
The earliest reference to cookies in America is in 1703, when the Dutch in New York provided 800 cookies for a funeral.

However, historically cookies can be traced back much further than most people would imagine.
It is estimated that in the 7th century AD, Persians were some of the first to grow and harvest sugar cane, which would have eventually been turned into baked goods. When testing to see if the temperatures were right, ancient Persians themselves may have used tiny “cakes” to check their ovens, that may be the ancient ancestors to today’s cookies.
Actually, cookies’ history start around 1st Century AD. While some might argue this started out as a version of bread, what they turned into is something that is certainly very close to resembling a cookie, and they were often used by traveling clansmen as a staple of their diet.
In any case, the movement of people for trade and war led the glory of sugar to be brought into Europe and, by the 14th century, cookies had come there as well.
Then, when Europeans migrated over to the Americas, they brought with them their sugar as well as their cookies. Americans eventually began developing their own types of cookies, including Chocolate Chip Cookie, one of the most popular of all.
It was 1987 when Matt Nader of the San Francisco-based Blue Chip Cookie Company created National Cookie Day, saying: “It’s just like having National Secretaries Day…It will just be a fun thing to do.”
And thus this sweet holiday have also been championed by The Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, obviously a supporter of all things that are cookie-related.
Even if the day did not start with him, some details about National Cookie Day can be found in Random House’s The Sesame Street Dictionary, which was published in the 1980s.
Since then, the word got around the globe, and people from various countries all around the world began to celebrate National Cookie Day on December 4th.
In fact, a number of variations on National Cookie Day are also celebrated around the world, such as Oatmeal National Cookie Day and Bake Cookies Day.
This is probably due to one of the greatest things about cookies: they come in hundreds of shapes and sizes and are relatively simple to make.
So get ready to celebrate everything that has to do with cookies, above all baking them and eating them!

So simple and easy, celebrating cookie day means enjoying at least a cookie, and perhaps sharing one with a friend.
Whatever is happening on this day (or any day, for that matter) will obviously be much better if it happens with a cookie in hand!
But you can also try a unique cookie flavor, beyond that typical chocolate chip or butter.
All sorts of unique and adventurous cookie flavors are out there just waiting to be tasted, including Peanut Butter Chocolate Bacon Cookies (would you try them?) but also Savory Herb Shortbread Cookies, made with parmesan and freshly minced rosemary, or Salted White Chocolate Lavender Cookies.
Or, of course, you can bake your cookies.
Or both.
Either way, eating cookies brings us happiness, and we should all do it more often.
Just don’t tell your doctor….