Whether you’re hosting or gifting, baking a batch of cookies will put you in the holiday spirit.

Holiday cookies have a storied history. The exact origin of the tradition of baking and sharing baked goods during the winter season is hard to pinpoint, but most histories seem to agree that these treats were an important part of the pagan winter solstice celebrations that characterized this time of the year in medieval Europe. Cookies remained part of the tradition as more religious holidays took over, and the idea spread, as many have, through colonial activity.

These days, the thought of Christmas cookies might bring to mind images of gingerbread men or simple sugar cookies, cut in seasonal shapes and decorated with red and green icing. But the Christmas cookie can stretch beyond this vision – perhaps it doesn’t even need to be a cookie.

Here are recipes for some of the Weekly staff’s favorite seasonal baked treats.

PERSIMMON COOKIES

Soft, luxurious hachiya persimmons provide most of the sweetness to these cookies, which is then balanced out by a blend of holiday pie spices. The recipe is a long-time favorite in Associate Editor Tajha Chappellet-Lanier’s house. As an added benefit, this recipe is easy to double for your holiday party needs.

• 1 stick melted butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 1 egg
• 2 cups flour
• 1/2 tsp cloves
• 1/2 tsp cinnamon
• 1/2 tsp nutmeg
• 1 cup walnuts, chopped
• 1 cup raisins
• 1 tsp baking soda, stirred into
• 1 cup ripe hachiya persimmon

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Combine butter, sugar and egg in one bowl and flour and spices in another. Stir baking soda into persimmon – let it sit and it will take on a gelatin-like texture. Stir wet ingredients and persimmon mixture into dry ingredients. Add walnuts and raisins and stir those in too. Arrange tablespoon-sized dollops on a greased baking sheet and bake for 15 minutes.

PECAN LOGS

These airy nut cookies are Christmas texture incarnate – light and buttery and flakey. They’re also dusted in a healthy amount of powdered sugar, lending them a seasonal snow-covered-hillside look. These are Staff Writer Pam Marino’s annual offering, and always popular with everyone at the office.

• 1/2 cup butter, softened
• 1/4 cup powdered sugar
• 1/2 tsp. vanilla
• 1 1/2 tablespoons water
• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup diced pecans
• Powdered sugar, for dusting

Cream the butter. Mix in the powdered sugar and vanilla. Add the flour in thirds, alternating with a little bit of the water each time. Stir in the pecans. Roll the dough into small log shapes, about a couple of inches long, and not too thick. Place on an ungreased baking sheet a couple of inches apart.

Bake at 325 degrees for 20 minutes. The bottoms should be a light golden brown. Remove from baking sheet to a cooling rack. When cool, roll in powdered sugar for dusting and store in an airtight container. This recipe doubles well.

BISHOP’S BREAD

Okay so this isn’t, strictly speaking, a cookie recipe. But Weekly Business Development Director Keely Richter swears by her mom’s Bishop’s Bread recipe as the taste of the holiday season – the bread is essentially a twist on a classic fruitcake that includes fewer spices but more chocolate. “It’s far more of a cookie-kind-of-thing than a fruitcake,” Richter says.

• 3 cups flour, sifted
• 3 tsp baking powder
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1 1/3 cups semi-sweet chocolate morsels (or more)
• 3 cups chopped walnuts
• 2 cups snipped dates
• 2 cups candied cherries, halved
• 6 large eggs
• 2 cups sugar

Preheat oven to 275 degrees. Line five 8x4 loaf pans with parchment paper. Sift flour, baking powder and salt into a bowl. Fold in chips, nuts and fruit. Beat eggs in a separate bowl, then fold in sugar. Fold eggs into flour mixture until no flour is visible, then spoon into pans. Bake for two hours, rotating pans halfway through. Cool in the pan on a cooling rack. Loaves wrapped in parchment paper make great gifts.