This is a story about the power that the Christmas season has to convert our hearts.

It is also about cookies.

Long before I baked all the cookies you are looking at on this page, I was, at best, a reluctant cookie person. I could get behind the principles of the Christmas tree, “O Holy Night,” candy canes, Scrooge and Karen Carpenter. But frankly, the holiday cookie-a-mania struck me as being disturbingly obsessive. It’s as if the gates of gorge open and suddenly everyone is consuming cookies that are red and green and look like wreaths and logs.

After all, we don’t behave this way at other times of the year. You don’t hear about cookies for Halloween, the Fourth of July, or even Easter – a holiday that could easily exploit additional sugar highs. Is it that this particular season makes people so nervous that they don’t have time to eat, say, a piece of cake? Is it that they don’t have the time to focus on anything that requires a plate?

The irony of cookies – and another reason I disdained them – is that they may be quick to eat but they take forever to make. Think about it: soften, cream, beat, scrape, whisk, sift, chill, roll, press, dust, sprinkle, preheat, brown til golden, cool. Do it all again.

If I wanted that kind of workout and mess, I could go to the gym.

So the old me was very bah-humbug on gingerbread, snowballs, pfefferneuse, spritzes and anything with candied cherries. I even managed to raise a child into adulthood without ever once making cutout cookies with her. The whole cookie concept put me in a bad mood.

Then I saw mandelbrezeln. That’s where all the trouble began. That’s when the worm of my conversion began to turn.

It’s entirely the fault of food writer and cook Dede Wilson and her new book “A Baker’s Field Guide to Christmas Cookies,” released this year by Harvard Common Press. Someone prophetically left a copy of the book on my desk and, unwittingly, I opened it to a photo of mandelbrezeln.

For those of you who don’t know German, mandelbrezeln means “almond cookie that looks so much like a pretzel, you don’t know it’s actually a cookie.”

Cookies are one thing, but pretzels? That’s a food I could relate to. My eyes squinted and my heartbeat quickened as I stared at the curvy shapes covered with sugar that looked like kosher salt. The photo said salty but the taste – and here, I felt one eyebrow mischievously rise – would say sweet.

Call it a contrary nature, but finally, here was a Christmas cookie just for me, a wry cookie, a downright practical joking, visually misleading cookie. It was a cookie to defy the entire cookie-eating nation. Or at least my holiday guests. I felt like the Grinch fibbing to Little Cindy Lou Who when she catches him shoving the tree up the chimney on Christmas Eve.

I secretly ordered the special Swedish pearl sugar from The Baker’s Catalogue in Vermont and calculated the fun I could have watching confusion wash over the faces of unsuspecting cookie lovers. The whole prospect made me feel powerful in a postmodern culinary sort of way.

While I was crafting my grand plan, I was aimlessly paging through Wilson’s book. Other cookies began to catch my eye. I was drawn to the opaque glazes dappled with nonpareils, the chunky textures of toffee bars, the snowy drifts of powdered sugar.

It was all so – pretty. And it made me feel so – happy. Something was rising in my soul, and it was because of those cookies. I began to wonder how they tasted with all that icing cascading down the sides and all those chocolate swirls dancing about in the shiny shortbread.

So while I waited for the sugar to come by mail, I made Thumbprint Cookies and Sicilian White Cookies, Pine Nut Macaroons, Kris Kringle’s Chocolate Krinkles, and Toffee Chocolate Chunk Almond Bars. And the Sugarplums! Such dainty, crystalline jewels, each one like a stained-glass window of sugar.

Before the sugar arrived, I had baked more than a dozen types of cookies. I couldn’t stop. I stayed up late and got up early to fill the kitchen with aromas of butter, chocolate, almond, anise and lemons. I poured through back issues of Gourmet and Bon Appetit looking for cookie recipes I had, in the past, skipped with snobbish disregard.

Could it be that after a lifetime of cookie detestation, I was finding my true self in cranberry-pistachio biscotti tipped with white chocolate?

Before the cookie compulsion ended, I found myself sitting in Dede Wilson’s living room talking about cookies. Wilson, whose first name is pronounced “day-day,” lives in Amherst, Mass. Coincidentally -honest to goodness – I was in her neighborhood Thanksgiving morning, and she agreed to see me just after she slid two pies in the oven for that evening’s dessert.

Her home was filled with familiar sugar-and buttery perfumes of baking. I could tell this was kindred territory, a bit like going to your therapist or to confessions, if your shrink or your priest wears a flour-smudged apron and has pans and baking sheets on the wall.

Wilson was game to give me tips on Christmas cookies.

This is what she told me:

. Don’t over bake.

. Use sturdy pans, not air-cushioned ones.

. Read the recipe and then follow it exactly at least once.

But how could I make my cookies look as professionally finished as hers? Wilson is best known for “The Wedding Cake Book” and her contributions to the “Dummies” series. She is also about to launch a new PBS series called “Seasonings with Dede Wilson.” But she’s really and truly a home cook, with three kids and a dog. In that spirit, she cautioned me about placing too high a priority on uniformity. That’s for restaurants and bakeries, she said.

“I have a thing about that cookie-cutter uniform look,” she said. “When people say: It’s too beautiful to eat, well, to me, that’s the death knell. I don’t want anyone to ever say that about my work, not even about a wedding cake. To me, that lacks soul and the handmade, homemade nest of a home kitchen.”

When I revealed my obsession with the pretzel cookies, Wilson simply nodded her head supportively. We could hear the pies sizzling in the oven, and I had to go, which I did, feeling fortified and justified and ready.

Indeed, the Swedish pearl sugar was waiting for me when I returned home, and it was time to make the mandelbrezln. I whisked, creamed, mixed, scraped, chilled and waited. But the dough came out dry and sloughy. When I tried to form a pretzel, the dough cracked. They were fat and lumpy, and the sugar wouldn’t stick.

My cookies didn’t look like pretzels. They looked like cookies pretending to be pretzels and doing a bad job of it. Worst of all, my in-residence taste tester took one bite and left the room, the crumbly remains of his cookie abandoned on the table.

The joke, it turns out, was on me.

Or it wasn’t.

The truth is I had a moment with those cookies. A Christmas moment of quiet warmth and sweetness and beauty.

So will I make cookies again next year?

Actually, I’ve been thinking more along the lines of pie. I’ve always hated pie, especially mincemeat pie.

Sicilian White Cookies

Makes 60 cookies.

Cookies:

2? cups all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon plus 1? teaspoons baking powder

? cup (1 stick) butter, softened

? cup granulated sugar

2 teaspoons finely grated lemon zest

? teaspoon anise extract

? teaspoon vanilla extract

2 large eggs

? cup milk

Glaze:

2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

? teaspoon cream of tartar

? cup milk

Multicolored nonpareils

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.

Whisk flour and baking powder together in a small bowl.

In a large bowl with an electric mixer on medium-high speed, beat butter until creamy, about 2 minutes. Add granulated sugar gradually, beating until light and fluffy, about 3 minutes; beat in lemon zest and extracts. Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each. Add about one-third of flour and mix on low speed. Gradually add milk and remaining flour, mixing just until blended. Mixture should stiffen but still be a bit sticky. Roll dough into 1-inch balls between your floured palms and place 2 inches apart on cookie sheet.

To make glaze, whisk together confectioners’ sugar and cream of tartar in a small bowl. Whisk in milk gradually until you have a thick but fluid icing (you might need more or less of the milk).

Bake just until light golden brown on bottom, about 10 minutes; tops will be white, dry, soft and springy to touch. Slide parchment onto racks.

Immediately pick up each cookie and dip top half into glaze; allow excess to drip back into bowl. Set cookie, icing side up, back on parchment on rack; immediately sprinkle with nonpareils while icing is wet. Work quickly so that you are dipping still-warm cookies into glaze and nonpareils are sticking to still-wet icing. Allow to cool and dry completely.

Cookies can be stored for two weeks at room temperature in single layers in airtight container.

Pine Nut Macaroons

Makes 32 cookies.

1 pound canned almond paste

2 cups granulated sugar

4 large egg whites

1? cups pine nuts

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper and coat lightly with nonstick spray.

In a large bowl, break almond paste into large pieces. With an electric mixer on medium speed, beat until paste is broken into pea-sized pieces. Add sugar and beat until combined, about 1 minute. Add egg whites one at a time, beating well after each. Beat until creamy and lightened, about 3 minutes. Scrape mixture into pastry bag fitted with ?-inch round tip (such as Ateco #806). Pipe rounds about 1? inches in diameter and 1 inch high (they will look like chocolate kisses) onto cookie sheets 1 inch apart.

Place pine nuts in a small bowl. One by one, gently lift each cookie (use your index and middle finger to scoop them up) and invert into bowl of pine nuts (cookies are a little sticky, so they will cling to your fingers when you invert them, allowing you some control). The nuts will stick to top of cookie. Return each cookie, nut side up, to sheet. If you cannot lift cookies because they are too sticky, simply press the pine nuts on top.

Bake until light golden brown around the edges and on bottom and just beginning to brown on top, about 20 minutes. Slide parchment onto racks to cool cookies completely.

Cookies can be stored for two weeks at room temperature in an airtight container.

The above recipes are from “A Baker’s Field Guide to Christmas Cookies,” by Dede Wilson.