It's Christmas! People in western countries enjoy baking breads & cookies with many Christmas special ingredients such as cinnamon, anise, almond, haselnuts, candied fruits, raisins, chocolate in many shapes, especially a gingerbread man:
What is gingerbread man? A Gingerbread man figure represents an important guest as it is documented that the Queen of England, Elizabeth I of England had it made for her important guests. Another type of this figure is a pastry made of sweet leavened dough which represents the Saint Nicholas, gift-giving tradition in the German-speaking countries, available around December 6 th:
He comes every year to give sweets to children who behave nice and punish the naughty children:
Actually, the candies are filled in a santa claus jute bag with peanuts and tangerines. In some countries where reindeers do not exist, santa claus has donkey instead:
There are various traditional cookies and breads that are available during Christmas season. For example, German Christmas cookies from a famous brand that your can find only during this time of the year in many supermarkets :
Each shape of cookie reminds people of Christmas such as cinnamon star cookies (Zimtsterne in German):
Snowflake (a symbol of Winter):
A bell (santa claus has a bell), gingerbread man (important guest(s)), half moon and comet which probably has its roots in the Christmas story where the "wise men" follow the Star of Bethlehem in the New Testament.
A Swiss dark cookies are called "Brunsli" because they are brown ("Brun" = brown in Swiss German). This kind of cookies contains white eggs, sugar, chocolate, cinnamon, flour and almonds. Home-made cookies are always the best, especially when mother or grandmother made them. We would like to thank the Swiss woman who made these delicious cookies with love and passion as well as the Viennese woman who sent us some recipe books for cookies.
Another type of sweets, an Italian Christmas bread, " Panettone ", originally from Milan since The Roman Empire which became popular to enjoy during Christmas and New Year in Europe. It is from the word " Panetto" = small loaf cake, the suffix - one changed the meaning to " large cake". It is a sweet bread loaf containing flour, candied fruits and raisins:
There are many variations of fillings and toppings such as chocolate chips and hail sugar. The plain one (no fillings) is called "Pandoro":
In Germany, Christmas bread is called " Weihnachtsstollen" or "Christstollen" or "Winterbrot" in German:
It looks and tastes similar to " Panettone ", but it is covered with snow which is actually just icing powder:
Hmm...Christmas sounds nice, so there is a place in the world called "Christmas Island", according to Wikipedia "The island was discovered on Christmas Day (25 December) 1643".
Another fiction name "Christmas Jones" in the James Bond movie, "The world is not enough" has nothing to do with it, except one possibility that the character could be born on Christmas. Well, many babies are born on this day too.
For people who do not celebrate Christmas, apparently, you are lucky that you have no stress during this time to prepare for Christmas dinner and you still can enjoy having dinner with your family as usual. If you are single, you still can bake christmas cookies or a night out to celebrate with other people.
Merry sweet Christmas!!
