A weekly column about the psychology of food and cooking.

Google “Christmas cookies” this time of year and you will get around 15 million hits. The web is alive with ideas for that great holiday tradition that compels us into the kitchen to bake tray after tray of aromatic sugar cookies, gingerbread cookies, rum balls, spice drops, biscotti and more to offer loved ones and colleagues or indulge in ourselves during this wintry and emotionally fraught time of year.

Some people bake Christmas cookies as part of a frenzied holiday ritual, attacking it like a chore and even stressing out about the results, despite the fact that baking cookies is so fool-proof that children can master them, with their precise measurements and methodical steps.

Others find that baking cookies is a good way to channel the free-floating anxiety that swirls like snow in the season of enforced holiday cheer.

Is there a better remedy for stress than creaming butter and sugar by hand with a wooden spoon? Even those with short attention spans can be assured of near-instant gratification watching cookies bake in minutes. And the sugar rush of eating or sharing them does wonders for a case of holiday blues.

Do you bake to destress or does baking stress you out?