I am a Christmas cookie lover. My family is a family of Christmas cookie lovers. Ask me about our annual Cookie Baking Day, and I will happily offer the details of our extensive (and intensive) exchange: one day, about 10 hours. The Decorating Team (my cousins, my sister and me) and the Baking Team (my mom and my aunt). German mandelhörnchen, Aunt Sue’s pecan crescents, gluten-free chocolate peppermint brownies, shortbread, gingerbread, buckeyes and about 150 cutout sugar cookies, baked, decorated, packed, distributed and shared widely with all my relatives. It’s quite the day.

As a cookie aficionado, a Catholic and a journalist, I couldn’t think of any better way to enter the Christmas season than to explore the religious history of a sampling of Christmas cookies, specifically the pizzella, lebkuchen and speculoos. I specify these now in case you’d like to accompany your reading with a sweet snack. (As for us at America, we will have a taste test of each at our office Christmas party.)

Let’s start at the beginning. The oldest cookie recipe still made today is thought to be the Italian pizzella (pluralized as pizzelle). Originally created by monks in Cocullo in the Abruzzo region of Italy, the crisp Abruzzese cookie is traditionally tied to St. Dominic of Sora, who is the inspiration for the Festa dei Serpari (“Festival of the Snake Catchers”), celebrated annually on May 1. 

Legend has it that the town of Cocullo was overrun by snakes, but Dominic, an Italian Benedictine monk, saved the day and miraculously rendered them harmless, so villagers baked these cookies to celebrate. (Dominic of Sora is now the patron saint of snake bites, rabies and toothaches. What a combo!) The cookie is made of simple ingredients—just flour, milk, oil, eggs, sugar and flavoring, which is classically anise, but vanilla, almond, lemon and chocolate have become popular over the years—and is traditionally baked in an intricately designed waffle press. The result is a light, thin, subtly flavored cookie, perfect to be enjoyed by itself or paired with an espresso.

So what distinguishes the pizzella as a Christmas cookie? The cookie’s snowflake-like shape and the light dusting of powdered sugar that typically covers the top bring to mind cozy winter scenes and childhood snow days, lending itself well to accompany Christmas festivities. The pizzella has also historically functioned as an edible ornament—the cookies are strung on trees en masse in Abruzzo to celebrate the feast day of Blessed Roberto da Salle, which occurs in July, but hey, Christmas in July should also count!

The German lebkuchen has a more meandering origin story. The first honey-spiced, lebkuchen-like cakes originated in Dinant, Belgium, in the Middle Ages, but the modern lebkuchen traces its roots back to monasteries in the Franconia region of Germany. The monasteries were situated along active spice trade routes, giving the monks easy access to the cookie’s central ingredients: cinnamon, allspice, nutmeg, citron and lots of honey. 

In the early stages of their recipe testing, the monks quickly ran into a problem: The flourless dough consistently stuck to the baking trays and burned. Of course, this didn’t deter them. They devised the genius idea to press unconsecrated communion wafers, called oblaten, into the bottom of the cookies, giving them a nonstick yet edible base. This technique not only prevented the cookies from charring but also served as a source of spiritual symbolism: Their faith, the foundation of their lives as monks, was also the foundation of their Christmas treats. The innovative, crunchy base ultimately lent itself to the cookie’s naming. Lebkuchen originates from the Latin libum, a flat, bread-like cake, offered sacrificially in ancient Rome. 

Many of the same warm spices used to make lebkuchen in Germany were also used in the production of the first speculaas (as they were originally known) of the 17th century. The spices were much more expensive to purchase in Belgium, though, so Belgian bakers later created speculoos—the suffix loos meaning “without.” The new recipe altered the original to center the rich flavor of caramelized sugar, a cheaper alternative to nutmeg, ginger or cardamom.

The Biscoff cookie butter craze of 2015 may have launched speculoos into the spotlight, but the national biscuit of Belgium has ancient ties to Christianity. Traditionally shaped into the figure of Sinterklaas, speculoos are typically enjoyed on the feast day of St. Nicholas, the Greek Christian bishop attendee at the First Council of Nicaea, who is said to have generously tipped three sacks of gold into the stockings of the daughters of a poor man in the fourth century, thus providing the young women with dowries and inspiring the character we know as Santa Claus. Unfortunately, gold isn’t the easiest thing to come by these days, so speculoos cookies and clementines stand in to preserve the sweet surprise of a visit from St. Nicholas.

Derived from the Latin speculum, meaning “mirror,” the crispy speculoos cookie historically displayed the intricate design of St. Nicholas etched into the molds they were pressed in. But those days are mostly in the rearview mirror. Nowadays, most of the speculoos cookies in the aisles of grocery stores bear the Lotus logo, the brand behind the cookie’s worldwide popularity, in place of an image of St. Nick (though a few bakeries still preserve the original look). The public’s understanding of the cookie’s ties to St. Nicholas may also be undermined by its popularity as an airline treat eaten at all hours by hungry customers. (Delta Air Lines brought the cookie aboard as its signature snack in 1984.) The next time you mindlessly snack on one of these treats in the skies, remind yourself of the cookie’s storied history.

Pizzelle, lebkuchen and speculoos—looks like we have ourselves a nice plate of Christmas cookies. Maybe these cookies are part of your yearly exchange, or maybe you learned about some of them for the first time today. Hopefully, you have some inspiration for your next cookie exchange, plus a few fun facts to share with those at your table. Happy baking!

Molly Wysocki is an O'Hare Fellow at America Media.