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Well, it’s that time of year. Cookies start appearing everywhere, on your desk, in your mailbox, in trays all over the place. So many cookies, so many options.

All (almost) Christmas cookies look delicious. They just don’t always taste that way, at least for me. Call me Ebenezer Cookie Monster if you want, but I have some issues with a few varieties.

Let me explain. I don’t like soft foods with hard things in the middle. A soft cookie for instance, with a chunk of a nut in the middle of it. This positive texture change from soft to hard feels too much like a tooth filling fell out and to me is just wrong in a cookie, or ice cream, or really any food. I have no issue going from a harder texture, like a cookie going from a harder texture to a softer one, such as a warm chocolate chip. This would be a negative texture change, which to me is a positive thing.

I’m told a lot of people feel the same way; they are just not as “clear” with their explanation.

I don’t like cookies that look better than they taste. An elaborate cookie that is dry and tasteless is like an empty box on Christmas morning, it’s just disappointing.

I don’t like cookies or treats when the name gives you no idea what it actually is. A buckeye is a great example. A buckeye is a tree common in some parts of Ohio. It was also a name given to Ebenezer Sproat by native Americans when he was appointed the first sheriff of the Northwest Territory. A college in Columbus later adopted it as their mascot.

A treat named for a tree nut is a big no-go with me.

Speaking of nuts — by now you likely think I am one — what is the deal with coconuts?

Many a good cookie and a lot of cakes are ruined, in my view, by the liberal application of shredded coconut.

A good Christmas cookie is soft, soft enough that if you hold it by one edge it will droop a little bit. It is covered with frosting or icing depicting some holiday symbol. It tastes like what you think it will and is small enough that you will not feel tremendously guilty when you have another one. The decorations on it should be simple enough that you don’t feel like you are destroying a painting by one of the masters when you bite off the top of it.

If you are baking Christmas cookies this weekend, please remember that their main function is to be eaten.

My cookie views are my own and do not represent the views of my coworkers, the newspaper or for that matter my family. They, for whatever reason, continue to make cookies with nuts in them sprinkled with coconuts.

Art Smith is online manager of The Marietta Times and The News and Sentinel. He is not normally a cookie Grinch. He can be reached at asmith@mariettatimes.com