When President Trump threatened this week to cut off foreign aid to any country voting against the United States in the United Nations General Assembly, it conjured up engrained public frustration over what some Americans – including Mr. Trump – perceive to be a world of freeloaders.

“All these nations that take our money and then vote against us at the [UN], they take hundreds of millions of dollars and billions of dollars and they vote against us,” Trump said Wednesday at his last cabinet meeting of the year. “Let them vote against us, we’ll save a lot. We don’t care.”

The president was mining the narrow but deep vein of public resentment against foreign aid recipients, adding, “People are tired of the United States – people that live here, our great citizens that love this country – they’re tired of this country being taken advantage of, and we’re not going to be taken advantage of any longer.”

Trump’s hardball tactics raised once again the decades-old debate over the purpose of the billions of dollars in military assistance and foreign aid the US provides to dozens of countries each year.

Is it altruism, or is it one tool in a global power’s national security strategy? How much and what kind of a quid pro quo should the US expect from each aid recipient – and should the US punish those who sometimes oppose it on the world stage, or should it take the long view of foreign aid’s over-all benefits?

Trump will have the opportunity to demonstrate where he comes down on those questions after Thursday’s overwhelming vote in the General Assembly, which implicitly condemned his decision this month to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

And while the president so far appears to have relished pitching his hard-ball approach to his base, there are already signs the pragmatic wing of his administration will react to the vote with more restraint.

In a lopsided vote on a resolution drafted by Yemen and US NATO ally Turkey, the 193-member General Assembly voted 128 in favor to 9 opposed, with 35 countries abstaining.

Among the affirmative votes were almost all of the top recipients of US military and development assistance, save for the top military assistance recipient – Israel. Most of America’s major allies, including Britain, France, Germany, and Japan, voted for the resolution, although Australia and Canada abstained – as did Colombia, which receives some US military assistance.

Mark Lennihan/AP

Dr. Riyad Mansour (c.), Palestine's observer at the United Nations, talks with members of the General Assembly prior to a vote Dec. 21, 2017, at UN headquarters in New York.

The resolution – which mirrored an Egypt-authored text that fell to a US veto in a 14-1 vote in the UN Security Council Monday – does not name the US, but demands that “any decisions and actions which purport to have altered the character, status, or demographic composition of the holy city of Jerusalem have no legal effect and … must be rescinded.”

The resolution further “demands that all states comply with Security Council resolutions regarding … Jerusalem, and not to recognize any actions or measures contrary to those resolutions.”

Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital – and also to begin the process of moving the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem – went against decades of US policy under both Republican and Democratic administrations that called for leaving Jerusalem as a “final status” issue to be settled as part of a peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians. The US has long supported Security Council resolutions deeming Jerusalem a final-status issue.

'Telling it like it is'

The General Assembly vote left the US isolated at the UN, but that is not a particularly unusual position for the US to be in, many international relations experts say. What is different, some add, is the toughness of Trump’s rhetoric and his near-glee at appearing to buck the international community.

“This vote at the UN is hardly unusual, the US has been isolated there before, particularly on Israel, and for that matter this idea of cutting aid is not new – Ronald Reagan came into office in 1981 with this same idea, that the US offers assistance, and then those who receive it turn around and humiliate us,” says Doron Ben-Atar, a professor of American history at Fordham University in New York.

But what is new, Dr. Ben-Atar adds, is the stridency in Trump’s rhetoric – what some call “telling it like it is” – which he says feeds a global view that “Trump is not a legitimate president” and ratchets up the Trump-international community standoff.

“American frustration with the UN and all the international agencies around it is long and it’s bipartisan, and rhetoric expressing that is within the regular borders of American discourse,” Ben-Atar says. “What is unusual here is the coarse way in which the Trump administration behaves, this talk of ‘taking names’ and ‘getting back’ at anyone who opposes the US in a vote,” he adds. “No country would want to be seen as bowing to that.”

The US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, had said earlier this week that she would be “taking names” and would report back to the president with a list of countries that opposed the US.

She continued with that theme as she addressed the General Assembly before the Thursday vote, saying “the United States will remember this day in which it was singled out for attack in the General Assembly for … exercising our right as a sovereign nation.”

Insisting the vote would “make a difference in how Americans look at the UN,” Ambassador Haley said, “We will remember it when we are called upon once again to make the world’s largest contribution to the United Nations. And we will remember it when so many countries come calling on us, as they so often do, to pay even more and to use our influence for their benefit.”

Kudos for tough talk

The Trump administration’s threatening tone toward the international community was criticized by former diplomats and international relations experts who said it isolated the US at a time when it will need partners to confront North Korea, Iran, and other adversaries.

But the tough talk won kudos from others who relished hearing echoes of the “sovereignty-above-all-else” wing of the president’s national security team in the pronouncements – and who have long advocated for foreign aid cuts.

“President Trump has rightly signaled that there will be costs for choosing to be against us, rather than with us,” says Frank Gaffney, president of the Center for Security Policy in Washington and a former acting assistant secretary of defense for international security policy in the Reagan administration.

Mr. Gaffney says the US should start by cutting back its annual contribution to the UN, which he describes as “a playpen for totalitarians, tyrants, and terrorists.” After that, he says, the US should cut aid to the Palestinian Authority.

But after those two targets, cutting assistance to “those who vote against us” becomes increasingly problematic.

Note of realpolitik

Egypt, Jordan, and Afghanistan are all major recipients of US assistance, and all voted for the resolution condemning the United States. But many national security experts say cutting aid to them over the vote would be a classic case of “cutting off your nose to spite your face.”

“We don’t support the Egyptian government because we like them or because we’re nice, we do it in part because of a commitment we made after they made peace with Israel. But mostly we do it because Egypt is a critical country in a region of vast implications for our national security,” says Fordham’s Ben-Atar. “We know it would be catastrophic if Egypt became a failed state.”

Likewise Jordan, which has been a stalwart ally of the US in the fight against ISIS, would not suffer alone and without broader regional implications if the US pulled the plug on aid because it voted for the UN resolution.

Indeed, by Thursday afternoon the Trump administration had already shifted from threats to “take down names” and punish those voting against the US to more nuanced and diplomatic language.

At the State Department, spokesperson Heather Nauert said the administration foreign policy team had been “empowered to explore various options going forward with other nations.”

But then she offered a note of realpolitik, adding that “the UN vote is really not the only factor the administration would take into consideration in dealing with our foreign relations.”

Elizabeth Conley/Houston Chronicle/AP

Electricians make their way into a home that is being raised, in the Meyerland neighborhood of Houston, on Dec. 6, 2017. More than 1,600 Houston residents whose properties flooded during and after hurricane Harvey may need to elevate their homes if they want to continue living there.

Stan Marek employs more than 1,000 people in his Houston-based construction company. But as they help rebuild the city after hurricane Harvey, he can’t afford to lose a single one.

So when he heard that the Trump administration is considering cancelling the temporary protected status (TPS) of roughly 250,000 immigrants from El Salvador and Honduras early next year, he tried to find out how many of his employees fit that profile. The final answer: 29.

“I can’t afford to lose 29 workers right now,” he adds. “I’m doing lot of work to help a lot of people, and if I lose them I can’t do the work.… We had a shortage of skilled labor before Harvey, and now it’s critical.”

Even more important, Mr. Marek stresses, is that most of those workers have been living in America for over 15 years, buying homes and raising teenage children. Cancelling their TPS “would just be tearing families up,” he says. “I think it’s ridiculous.”

Congress created the TPS program in 1990 to temporarily shield immigrants already in the US from deportation if they can’t return home because of natural disasters, health crises, or civil unrest. Recipients have work authorization and pay taxes, but the program doesn’t provide a pathway to permanent residency or citizenship.

The “temporary” nature of the designation has become anything but in recent years, however. The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has repeatedly renewed the status for Central Americans since hurricane Mitch and earthquakes ravaged the region in 1998 and 2001, respectively. Today, over three-quarters of the 325,000 TPS recipients in America are from El Salvador and Honduras, according to the American Immigration Council, with almost two-thirds of those having at least one US-born child, and one-third owning a home.

The Trump administration has been revisiting and terminating TPS designations for various countries this year, saying the conditions that prompted the designations have improved enough that those nationals can return. The DHS cancelled TPS for Haitians and Nicaraguans last month, while extending Hondurans’ protection for six months.

Critics counter that conditions in TPS holders’ home countries haven’t improved, or have worsened. The administration also has a humane and economic interest in not splitting up families and removing workers who are integral to large industries like construction and hospitality, they argue.

A 'long overdue' shift

The arguments illustrate the problem created by the TPS program’s inherent subjectivity, said Doris Meissner, a senior fellow at the Migration Policy Institute, in a conference call earlier this month with reporters.

“Prior administrations have established rationales for renewing TPS even for longer periods of time based on findings of inadequate recovery and new crises,” she added. “The current administration is more concerned with lax enforcement of immigration laws and sees TPS as one area where ‘temporary’ has to be reined in.”

Nomaan Merchant/AP

Guillermo Miranda Vazquez (r.) speaks to Francisco Pacheco, left, an organizer surveying day laborers about their work conditions in Houston on Oct. 5, 2017. Mr. Vazquez starts his day in a parking lot near the Home Depot where he easily finds work alongside other day laborers who are cleaning up Houston after hurricane Harvey.

In its TPS cancellations so far, the DHS has focused on whether conditions have improved in the home countries – an approach consistent with the language of the 1990 law, which says designations are based specifically on “an ongoing armed conflict” or “environmental disaster,” or the home country being unable “to handle adequately the return” of its citizens.

For example, the DHS cancelled TPS for Haitians – granted in the wake of the 2010 earthquake – because “those extraordinary but temporary conditions … no longer exist.” The number of displaced people in Haiti had decreased by 97 percent, the agency added, and the country is now able to safely receive its roughly 50,000 citizens in America.

El Salvador and Honduras are the most striking examples of this generosity with TPS, says Andrew Arthur, a fellow at the Center for Immigration Studies, a Washington-based think tank that describes itself as “low-immigration, pro-immigrant.”

“It’s probably long overdue that an administration take a serious look at whether the program should continue,” says Mr. Arthur, who adds that returning citizens could strengthen their home countries’ economies and institutions.

“We’re talking about countries going on two decades of TPS,” he adds. “The original circumstances of their designation have long since passed.”

'What will I do with his dream?'

For the TPS holders and their supporters, however, the two decades is a compelling reason for why their status should not be cancelled.

Salvadoran, Honduran, and Haitian TPS recipients are projected to contribute an estimated $164 billion to America’s GDP over the next decade, according to the American Immigration Council. Salvadoran and Honduran TPS holders have also been paying into Social Security for an average of 15.4 years, the Council reports, and 90 percent of them report filing income taxes each of the past three years.

“It’s simply not in the national interest of the government, for national security and the economy, to remove people that are an integral part of our economy and our society,” says Alex Nowrasteh, an immigration policy analyst at the libertarian Cato Institute.

“Immigrants don’t take American jobs, they don’t have a real effect on American wages” according to economic research, he adds. “By deporting people from the United States, they take those jobs with them and those jobs disappear, and … we’re also kicking out the consumers of American products.”

Possible changes to TPS also throw into uncertainty the futures of an estimated 273,000 US-born children with ties to someone with TPS. Isabel Barrera, a Salvadoran TPS holder who works in the hotel industry in southern California, is nervous about having to leave her US-citizen son the year before he graduates high school.

“I’m trying to figure out what I’ll do with his dream,” she said on a conference call.

“If they try to deport me, my son would be here by himself,” she added. “Or I would have to take him back to El Salvador, but what type of life would I give him [there]? He was born, raised, and is part of the culture in this country.”

Critics also note that, while El Salvador and Honduras have recovered from the natural disasters that originally prompted their TPS designation, they are still struggling. While there may not be an “ongoing armed conflict,” El Salvador and Honduras have some of the highest peacetime murder rates in the world. TPS recipients who return could be particularly targeted for violence and extortion, experts say. A paper by researchers at American University and the Central American Institute of Fiscal Studies released this week recommended that El Salvador merit a TPS extension, citing ongoing problems with natural disasters, economic development, and public health. Remittances sent from citizens in the US are key parts of both economies, representing 17 percent for El Salvador and 18 percent for Honduras in 2016 – another sign that the countries could have difficulty absorbing returnees.

When, not if

TPS holders have to re-register every six-to-18 months, a process that includes having their fingerprints taken, being screened for criminal convictions, and, for those who work, paying $500.

“There’s no one more thoroughly screened,” says Royce Murray, the policy director at the American Immigration Council.

“Whether you agree or disagree that TPS should have been extended this many years,” she adds, “we need to recognize that these families are integral to our communities.”

Given the administration’s decision not to extend Haitians’ and Nicaraguans’ status, many experts and advocates are assuming El Salvador and Honduras will lose their TPS designations as well. What becomes important then, they say, is how much time DHS allows before ending the designation.

A 12- to 18-month warning, for example, makes it “much more possible to do the kind of planning and pull together the kind of wherewithal … to be successful in going back,” says Ms. Meissner, a former commissioner of the US Immigration and Naturalization Service.

Still, some are hoping that Congress will step in. Marek, from the Houston construction company, has been advocating for immigration reform for years now. His company helps with a project called The Rational Middle, which advocates for “sensible policy solutions” to immigration issues, and he sees a legislative fix for keeping his 29 Salvadoran TPS employees, and their fellow TPS holders, as one of those sensible solutions.

“Our immigration system has been broken for a long, long time,” he says, “but I don’t think we ought to take it out on those people.”

Hannah McKay/Reuters

A priest wears a rainbow ribbon during a vigil against homophobia on Feb. 15, 2017, outside the General Synod of the Church of England in London.

Britain's transgender community recently got an unlikely new ally: the Church of England.

Last month the church released guidelines for its 4,700 schools, which aim to tackle transgender bullying. Most of the advice deals with anti-bullying policies and training for staff. But one section stated that pupils should feel able to “try out the many cloaks of identity” – a generous progressive position that quickly sparked outrage among its more conservative wings.

From the appointment of the first female bishop, to welcoming refugees and supporting food banks, the guidelines are just the latest in the church’s efforts to modernize and become inclusive. And while traditional, conservative members of the church are struggling to accept changes, others believe modernization – especially when it comes to inclusion – is crucial for the church’s survival in the face of ever-dwindling numbers. 

“If people are not coming into our buildings,” says The Rev. Sally Hitchiner, an openly gay priest and founder of Diverse Church, a movement for young LGBT adults, “because they are afraid that we don’t genuinely love them and that God hates them because they are gay or trans, we have lost everything of our message before anyone has even opened their mouths.”

A church left behind

Only 15 percent of Britons consider themselves to be Anglican, a figure which has plunged from 40 percent in 1983, according to the most recent British Social Attitudes survey. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, just 3 percent say they are Anglican and, for the first time, more than half the population say they have no religion whatsoever. The scale of the decline has been the focus of the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, since he was elected in 2013 and launched his ambitious Renewal and Reform program, which aims to make the church “fit for purpose” in the 21st century.

There are some issues, however, which are proving difficult to tackle. The thorniest of all has been the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender people.

It has caused a rift in the church since same-sex marriages were legalized in England and Wales in March 2014, and the slowness of the church to embrace LGBT rights puts it at odds with the attitudes of the British public, which have changed dramatically in recent years. In a speech to the General Synod – the church’s governing body – at the time, Archbishop Welby discussed the “revolution in the area of sexuality” taking place in society and said he had been struck by the “overwhelming change of cultural hinterland” during the debates in parliament about the Same Sex Marriage Bill. He added that the majority of the population “rightly detests homophobic behavior or anything that looks like it.”

Frank Augstein/AP/File

The Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev. Justin Welby, addresses the media during a press conference in Canterbury, England, in January 2016. The Church of England has issued new guidance to counter anti-LGBT bullying at its schools, telling teachers that children should be permitted to wear tutus, tiaras, or superhero capes 'without judgment or derision.'

This growing lack of tolerance for anyone perceived to be homophobic perhaps explains the downfall of Tim Farron, a devout evangelical Christian who until June was the leader of the Liberal Democrats. Early in the last election, he declined to answer questions from journalists and the public about whether he thought gay sex was a sin, stirring a media storm. Though he later stated that he did not believe gay sex was sinful, many blamed the controversy his non-answer caused – due to the accusations of homophobia that followed it – for his party's poor election results. He resigned soon afterward.

At a speech for religion and society think tank Theos in November, Mr. Farron told guests: “If you actively hold a faith that is more than an expression of cultural identity … you are deemed to be far worse than eccentric. You are dangerous. You are offensive.”

Ms. Hitchiner argues that one of the ways to change this is to become more inclusive and welcoming. Latest figures show that the number of people attending weekly services fell to a record low of just 780,000, which is why Hitchiner says it’s crucial to “listen to those who have left the church and those who would like to engage with church but feel they can’t.” 

Shrinking attendance

It could be too late, according to the Rev. Andrew Foreshew-Cain, who made headlines for being one of the first priests to openly defy the ruling that the clergy must not enter into a same-sex marriage.

While the diocese of London, which has seen a rise in attendance, is held up as a model of success, Fr. Foreshew-Cain, who resigned from his London parish earlier this year, says many in the congregation are immigrants from Christian countries or middle-class families who attend because they want to get their children into excellent church-run schools. “It it held up as the church’s great success story but it’s not an uncomplicated picture of success, and nationally it is one of continuing and very significant decline,” Foreshew-Cain says. “At the same time, society is getting more liberal.”

Attendance figures in the diverse diocese are set to continue to be under the microscope after the surprise announcement this week that the Rev. Sarah Mullally will be its new bishop, which is one of the most senior roles in the church. While campaigners for gender equality said they were “delighted” with the news, the choice was controversial as many in London still do not accept female priests.

Christian blogger Jeremy Marshall offers another explanation for the decline in attendance. In a blog following the release of the latest figures in October, he wrote: “In the past it was socially normal to count yourself as [Church of England] even if you had no religious beliefs or very fuzzy ones which amounted to nothing much more than a belief in being nice.” As atheism has grown in popularity, this standpoint has become “unfashionable,” he said, so those who were not really Christian in the first place are no longer counted in the numbers. 

Alienated by reform?

Others have argued that people are actually leaving the church precisely because it is modernizing and embracing issues such as tackling transgender bullying. In fact, some argue that faithful Christians should leave.

One is the Rev. Dr. Gavin Ashenden, who resigned as chaplain to Queen Elizabeth after voicing his concern that a passage from the Quran was read out in a Glasgow Cathedral. He told the Conservative Woman website that Christians should “leave their church” if they seek to be faithful and that the church was “so politicized that it matters more now that you are a feminist than a theologian.”

He added: “I'm not sure I see much point in a church that just wants to be accepted as a sort of not too irritating chaplain to a secular and hedonistic culture, which is what it seems to be becoming. I want to remain a faithful Anglican, but increasingly it looks like that is only possible outside the [Church of England].”

Foreshew-Cain, however, believes congregations are far more open to inclusivity than church leaders give them credit for. “There is a great divide between what the people in the church think and what the leaders think,” he says. “On the ground churches are increasingly getting on with the business of welcoming anyone and everyone.”

Christopher Bendana

Josephine Nansamba shows off her "bazooka" corn in Kabende, Uganda. Ms. Nansamba was one of the first farmers to test the drought-tolerant hybrid variety UH 5354.

Josephine Nansamba loves her bazooka.

As a corn farmer in Kabende, Uganda, she knows what it’s like to see her income dry up alongside her crops. But the last few years have been different, she says, thanks to a new variety of drought-tolerant corn known as bazooka. Today, despite drawn-out spells of drought that have claimed her neighbors’ crops, her bazooka is sturdy, tall, and a flourishing green.  

Ms. Nansamba’s bazooka is one of several newly developed, hybrid strains of corn sprouting in Ugandan fields. Farmers, researchers, and policymakers in this East African country are increasingly seeking new strains of staple crops in the wake of recent droughts and food shortages here and in the broader Sub Saharan region of Africa.

Climate research suggesting that such problems are likely to intensify has added a new level of urgency to the situation, prompting legislators in October to legalize the use of genetically modified crops after five years of politically charged debate. Researchers hope that legislation will open the door for a whole host of new crops to help bring long-term food security to a region that already struggles with hunger. Beyond drought tolerance, these researchers hope to develop strains that deter pests and offer more nutritional value.

In the meantime, new varieties developed with traditional crossbreeding techniques, like Nansamba’s bazooka, offer a much-needed lifeline.

Corn, or maize, as it is known throughout Africa, is a significant source of revenue for farmers in Uganda. It’s also a dietary staple for the country’s urban poor, school children, and the prison population. 

More broadly, 300 million people depend on corn as their main food source in Sub Saharan Africa, a region that has been hit hard by drought and famine in recent months and years. Corn is predominantly grown by small farmers who do not have access to advanced irrigation systems. So these farmers depend on rainwater to nourish this notoriously thirsty crop. 

In Uganda, farmers collectively produce nearly 3 million tons of corn annually. In 2016, much of that crop failed following an extended period of drought in April and May. By November of that year, drought-related crop failures had thrust some 1.3 million Ugandans into a food crisis.

In Nansamba’s fields, however, bazooka has flourished. Where others worry their seeds may fail to germinate or produce combs, Nansamba and her husband, Vincent Ssempewa, look forward to their harvest.

“We expect a better harvest,” Mr. Ssempewa says.

Sowing opportunity

The hybrid variety UH 5354, as bazooka is officially known, was bred by National Crops Research Resources Institute (NaCRRI) Namulonge. Nansamba and Ssempewa were some of the first farmers to test out the new strain in Uganda as part of a pilot program. When the company Naseco Seeds canvassed her local area looking for farmers to try out the bazooka, Nansamba says she jumped at the chance. 

“They gave me the seedlings to test,” she says. And she has not looked back. After seeing how well the variety performed on the one-hectare field on her homestead, she transitioned nine additional hectares to UH 5354. As a result, she has seen yields more than triple and has been able to harvest her own seeds for the upcoming season.

The increased produce has translated to added income of $180 per hectare (about 2-1/2 acres). With 10 hectares of cropland, her family has climbed well into the middle class in a country where the per capita income is $700 per year.

Ssempewa says the new corn variety has given the family of 10 a lifeline after coffee, another thirsty cash crop, withered during a recent the dry spell.

“It is maize that brings us money,” he says. “The coffee dried up.” 

Domenic Nyeko, an agronomist at the 5,000-acre Omer Farm in Amuru district in northern Uganda has seen similar boosts in yield with other hybrid strains of corn. The variety Longe 10H, also an NaCRRI creation, has ensured reliable harvest during the first of Uganda’s two corn seasons. The first season, known as season A, is marked by a brief period of rain and a 20-28 day dry spell.

“For a crop that is not tolerant, this can have a knocking effect,” he explains. “For the tolerant variety, leaves are always green, even during this short dry period.”

Crop yields don’t approach those seen in the United States or Brazil, where fertilizers are common. But these new varieties bring farmers a peace of mind that they will get something out of their fields, regardless of weather, Opolot Okaasai, the director of crop resources at Uganda’s Ministry of Agriculture, Animal Industry and Fisheries.

“Whatever happens, you will not come out empty handed,” says Dr. Okaasai.

Benefits without borders

Godfrey Asea, director of NaCRRI, says the institute has already developed 10 drought-resilient varieties. With the passage of the National Biosafety Act in October, researchers expect to make additional headway using genetically modified organisms to create more productive, nutritious, and stress-tolerant strains.

Such boosts for Ugandan farmers would likely resonate far beyond the nation’s borders. In addition to exporting corn to Kenya and South Sudan, Uganda also sells to the World Food Programme, which feeds millions of refugees from South Sudan, Somalia, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Rwanda.

Every other year, Carol Ramos goes big for Christmas. This year she decorated her home with nine Christmas trees and held two separate holiday dessert parties – one for family and one for friends. But these parties weren’t cookie swaps. She bakes all the desserts herself.

“This year it was over 50 dozen cookies,” says Ms. Ramos, a finance director from Santa Clara, Calif., via email. She also baked cookies for a benefit for a domestic violence shelter and filled countless goodie bags tied with ribbons as gifts for friends and coworkers. “It’s a way of sharing something I love to do and people seem to appreciate it more than anything else,” she says.

The words “Christmas” and “cookie” go hand-in-hand this time of year and the tiny sweet morsels can be found in centuries-old holiday traditions around the globe. In the United States, yearly classics include sugar cookies, gingerbread people with raisin eyes and lopsided smiles, molasses thumbprint cookies, and powdered Russian tea cakes (also known as Mexican wedding cakes), among many others. The aroma of cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, and a hint of citrus signal the holidays like nothing else. 

Recipes have long served as cross-cultural pollinators, generously shared and fiercely protected as they are handed down from generation to generation. Like snowflakes, no two are exactly alike.

Recent trends show home cooks are even willing to experiment a bit with traditional favorites, such as combining chocolate with rosemary or thyme in a good base recipe, says Julia Collin Davison, co-host of the TV show America’s Test Kitchen, in Boston.

“Just taking simple little things and elevating your sugar cookie to a browned-butter, rosemary sugar cookie is suddenly really interesting,” says Ms. Collin Davison. “All you need are two flavors that go together and are somewhat unusual and you have something modern.”

If gingerbread with a hint of garam masala seems a bit too modern for your tastes, consider the recipe for “Another Christmas Cookey” in what is widely considered the first American cookbook, “American Cookery” by Amelia Simmons published in 1796:

To three pound flour, sprinkle a tea cup of fine powdered coriander seed, rub in one pound butter, and one and half pound sugar, dissolve three tea spoonfuls of pearl ash in a tea cup of milk, kneed all together well, roll three quarters of an inch thick, and cut or stamp into shape and size you please, bake slowly fifteen or twenty minutes; tho' hard and dry at first, if put into an earthern pot, and dry cellar, or damp room, they will be finer, softer and better when six months old.

Like many early recipes, “Another Christmas Cookey” leaves much to the interpretation of the home cook working over an open fire. Cast iron cook stoves didn’t arrive in homes until the 1830s and even then temperatures and bake times were largely guesswork.

But Ms. Simmons herself didn’t create the Christmas cookie, historians say, she was simply reflecting a trend of the time. Hidden within “Another Christmas cookey” are clues that point the recipe’s origins to the Hudson Valley Dutch in New York, says William Woys Weaver, a food historian and cookbook author in Devon, Pa. 

“The American word ‘cookie’ comes from the Holland Dutch word koekje, a diminutive of koek (cake), which was the New Year’s cake,” says Mr. Weaver, author of “Dutch Treats.” These small cakes were offered as part of the Holland Dutch open-house tradition on New Year’s Day. “The theory is that when George Washington was living in New York he held open house [receptions] and used this local Dutch tradition of serving these cakes. And it just became very fashionable,” he says.

Tracing the cookie even further back to Europe in the Middle Ages, small decorative cakes were the work of highly trained artisanal or court bakers, and never home cooks, says Weaver. The bakers used wooden molds carved with intricate images to create eye-appealing treats. The sweet cakes were sold on holidays or festive occasions, such as a royal wedding.

It was only when the middle class became better off and ingredients more widely available and affordable did home cooks start replicating cookies in their own kitchens.

“When baking became industrialized in the 19th century, you no longer had this culture of carving these beautiful molds,” says Weaver. “You had tin cutters and you did the details with icing.”

While many Christmas cookies do come laden with frosting, tiny silver balls, or sprinkles, they don’t have to be, says Ramos. Her most requested recipe this year: brownie-stuffed chocolate chip cookies.

“If they’re well made, their recipients will like them, whether they’re fancy or not,” she says. Her tried-and-true tips for the holiday harried: Stick to cookies where you can make the dough ahead of time. Simply portion the dough into balls, and then put them in freezer bags marked with the cookie name, oven temperature, and baking time. Then bake the day they are needed. “There’s nothing worse than stale, dry cookies,” says Ramos.

But if Christmas Eve is approaching and your cookie jar is still empty, don’t fret. You can always search out and support a local baker, says Weaver.

“If you want to make your family happy, pick something that’s very special – you don’t even have to bake cookies – concentrate on it, and then let that be your gift for the holidays,” he says.

*    *    *    *    *

Last year for our first Christmas together, my husband wistfully referred to chocolate powdered cookies his mom used to bake. So she generously copied and sent me the recipe for these Chocolate Crinkles. Chilling the dough and dipping them in confectioners’ sugar had me worried they would be too complicated or time consuming. But these were easy. They are best eaten the day they are baked.

Chocolate Crinkles
Makes about 6 dozen cookies

1/2 cup vegetable oil

4 squares unsweetened chocolate (4 ounces), melted

2 cups granulated sugar

4 eggs

2 teaspoons vanilla

2 cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 cup confectioners’ sugar

1.     Melt the chocolate in a saucepan on the stovetop over low heat, or use a double boiler if you have one.

2.     In large bowl, mix together the oil, melted chocolate, and sugar.

3.     Stir in one egg at a time until well mixed.

4.     Add vanilla, flour, baking powder, and salt, and stir well to combine.

5.     Chill at least two hours or overnight.

6.     Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. and grease a cookie sheet.

7.     Measure out confectioners’ sugar into a small bowl.

8.     Using a teaspoon, drop dough into sugar; roll until coated on all sides, and form into a ball.

9.     Place about 2 inches apart on the greased cookie sheet.

10.   Bake 10 to 12 minutes, maybe even less. Be sure you don’t over bake!

11.   Remove promptly from cookie sheet and cool on a wire rack.

Dmitri Lovetsky/AP

Russian cosmonaut Anton Shkaplerov (c.), US astronaut Scott Tingle (r.), and Japanese astronaut Norishige Kanai (l.), pose prior to the launch of a Soyuz-FG rocket at the Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan Dec. 17 that would take them to the International Space Station.

Right now a man-made object the size of a football field is orbiting some 250 miles above Earth. It’s so large it can be seen from the ground with the naked eye.

For more than 17 years humans have occupied the International Space Station. The 53 crews that have rocketed aloft have come from 10 nations; in all, people from 17 countries have visited.

In mid-December the latest three-person crew arrived, bringing astronauts from Russia, Japan, and the United States. They joined two Americans and a Russian already midway through a stay in near space.

The arrival ceremony for newcomers is simple and informal: Each one receives a warm hug from each of those already aboard.

At about the same time the new crew members arrived, an unmanned vehicle brought fresh supplies, including Christmas presents for the crew from family and friends. Photos show the station adorned with holiday decorations, including stockings hung with all due care. On Dec. 25 many miles of airless space will separate crew members from their homes and families.

The space station conducts important scientific work, taking advantage of its low-gravity environment as the station “falls” around Earth in orbit. The numerous experiments contribute to advances in many fields as well as to knowledge needed for future missions to the moon and Mars. 

The closest thing to a station crisis occurred in 2003 when the space shuttle Columbia tragically disintegrated during reentry into Earth’s atmosphere, grounding the US shuttle fleet. The station crews had lost their ride home. But after only a short delay a Russian Soyuz capsule was able to give the next rotating crew a lift. Today Russia handles the space taxi chores.

Throughout the station’s history, no lives have been lost among the nearly 400 visitors. And despite many nationalities working together no diplomatic incidents have created a commotion back on Earth.

The US and Russia are committed to maintaining the joint space station until at least 2024. The Russians are talking about breaking off to build a station of their own. (One recent news report suggested Russia might build a space hotel as well – think of those rooms with a view!)

The station’s international crews work in close quarters and in a dangerous environment for peaceful purposes and for the advancement of human knowledge. As many visitors to space have reported, when they look earthward they see one beautiful “big blue marble” without borders hanging in space. Their view might be called sub specie aeternitatis (“from the perspective of the eternal”).

Two millenniums ago wise men saw a light in the sky, a moving star. It led them to a cradle, a baby, and to a universal message of “on earth peace, good will toward men.”

The space station seen circling Earth serves as a modern reminder of what humanity can accomplish when nations work together in peace.