Kiarah Harris plans to leave cookies out for Santa.

Why not? She has a child and it’s tradition – families have been treating the jolly old elf for decades. Besides, Harris is a baker and owner of The Cookie Club in Mexico.

Her display is stocked with 15 to 20 different options at any given time. And, she says, “the combinations you can create are endless.”

It’s hard to imagine Christmas without cookies. Neighbors trade decorated sugar cookies, cut to to resemble trees, ornaments, Santa or Rudolph. Recipes for red velvet cookies pop up online. There are meltaways dusted with powdered sugar, peanut butter rounds dotted with chocolate kisses, crinkles and snickerdoodles.

“And we’re going to see a huge spike in gingerbread,” Harris pointed out.

The attraction is obvious – the warmth of the oven, the pleasantries of sugar, the toasty aromas drifting through the room, the spices that send minds wandering to distant lands. But why leave a few cookies out for the man in the red suit?

No one knows for certain. Perhaps it started with Nordic mythology – Odin and his eight-legged horse beating through the snow. Children left treats not for the god, but for his mount. But the association between cookies, milk and Santa began creeping into American literature in Victorian times.

The 19th century saw an evolution in Christmas tradition and the creation of the Santa Claus we know today. “A Visit From St. Nicholas” – now more often referred to as “Twas the Night Before Christmas” – was published in 1823. Thomas Nast began illustrating him and located his workshop at the North Pole. He is also credited with drawing attention to the naughty and nice lists.

In Christmas: A Candid History, Bruce Forbes suggests that this disciplinarian trait drawn by Nast in part explains the cookie tradition. Instead of treats, they were bribes set out to get back on the big man’s good side.

He checks those lists twice, you know.

Assuming Forbes is right, and knowing it is normal for people to have personal favorites, perhaps those on the naughty list could go a step further – you know, give him a cookie he really likes.

So what’s Santa’s favorite?

Chocolate chip would be an obvious choice, but Harris disagrees.

“That’s second – runner up,” she said.

A scan of seasonal surveys puts gooey butter cookies as the most popular treat in Missouri for Christmas – either that or peanut butter chocolate chip, depending. Nationwide? Martha Stewart’s website lists peanut butter blossoms, but that could be disputed, as well.

“We’re going to go with s’mores cookies,” Harris said. It’s a cookie she is ready to add to her list of holiday offerings and she’s hoping it catches on, especially with good old Kris Kringle.

As it turns out, while Harris is an expert when it comes to baking cookies (hers are near impossible to resist), she’s a little less certain when it comes to Santa’s preferences. The shop opened in the fall of 2019, so she had no time to track the sale of specific cookies.

And in her own childhood the cookies never made it to that tray set out for his visit.

“We made cookies,” she recalled. “But they got eaten.”