Baking Christmas Cookies

My son baked his first batch of the holiday season yesterday. Strictly to 'test' the oven, of course!

When do you start on your holiday cookies? Are you baking some now for Thanksgiving?

Do you give away batches of cookies in fancy containers for holiday gifts?

There is simply nothing like the smell of warm, baked cookies on a cold or rainy fall/winter day...and, after all, we had to make sure the oven was in proper working order for our turkey. Wouldn't want to find out on Thanksgiving morning that the oven is broken!

If you look in many stores now, they already have fancy packages full of chocolates as holiday gifts....so I guess their 'use by' date is after Christmas! But if you're wanting cookies to be fresh enough to eat...how long to you have in between the time you make them and the time you give them to someone?

(My boys ate almost the whole batch that was baked...after all, they had to make sure they liked these sugar cookies before we went and made a bunch more!)

What's your favorite kind of holiday cookie? Do you bake it yourself?