16 Holiday Cookies Everyone Secretly Hates

Do thumbprint cookies look festive? Sure! But that sticky jam filling just can't provide the same bliss that a swoosh of silky frosting can. It's like your grandma is trying to pass off toast as dessert.

We don't quite understand the appeal of crinkle cookies. They often have a few sad cracks instead of looking like the pretty, crackly versions you've seen on Pinterest and the powdered sugar topping doesn't do much for the flavor.

Shortbread is a fine accompaniment to a cup of tea, but if we're talking Christmas cookies, you've got to admit that this classic is a little weak. When it comes to festive baking, don't be half-hearted about it!

So after you've taken a bite and gotten powdered sugar all over your fingers, face and sweater — or been nearly suffocated by inhaling it — all you get is a crumbly nut-filled center? Snowball cookies just aren't worth it.

I'm sorry, is this Little House on the Prairie? Did we run out of our sugar ration for the winter? Okay then, let's nix the cookies that taste like tar.

Italian families will stand by these classic sweets until the end, but these mildly sweet, nut-studded cookies just can't stand up to other more festive options in the holiday dessert spread.

When it comes to cookie mix-ins we're all about chocolate chips, sprinkles and even the occasional nuts, but dried fruit need not apply. Plus, oatmeal cookies taste like breakfast, not dessert.

These are lovely for dipping in coffee, but they're tough to bite into and more closely resemble a cracker or biscuit than a cookie. Bottom line: Biscotti just don't belong in any holiday gift basket.

These classic German treats are pretty, but honestly just too healthy to deserve a spot in our holiday rotation. We want our cookies sweet enough to give us a toothache.

Cheerful shapes and some sprinkles aren't enough to make plain sugar cookies stand out. They're basically blank canvases, so why not jazz it up with icing and candy toppers?

A little family of cleverly decorated gingerbread men (and women) is definitely cute ... but not quite cute enough to eat. The weirdly spicy combination of ginger, nutmeg and cloves is an acquired taste best used to build gingerbread houses.

Store-bought cookies are already a bit of a cop out already, so the least you could do is get some decent looking ones. The holiday-edition tubes of slice-and-bake cookies give you a choice between sad snowmen, droopy Christmas trees or very manic looking reindeer. Yikes.

There are so many awesome sugar cookie hacks out there, so make sure to skip this one, which involves melting Jolly Ranchers in the middle of sugar cookies. The effect can be cool, but you're more than likely to chip a tooth trying to chow down on one.