There was the usual excitement surrounding Christmastime as a child – wondering what was going to be under the tree on Christmas morning, what was inside that HUGE box covered with shiny blue wrapping paper glittering with silvery snowflakes. Relatives would begin to arrive for vacation and friends stopped in to visit. Colorful Christmas cards arrived in the mail every day bringing news of loved ones who lived far away.
Then, there were the cookies, seemingly endless varieties of them. There were the Mace cookies, cut into festive shapes including trees and bells and sprinkled with red and green sugar. There were the peanut blossoms, snowballs, rich chocolate fudge, toffee, gingerbread people and soft cookies filled with gooey red and green gumdrops. In the days leading up to Christmas, our kitchen became akin to a commercial bakery with pan after pan of warm creations emerging from our avocado-colored oven.
As each pan cooled, the cookies were promptly nestled into wax-paper lined Christmas cookie tins of all different sizes and colors. The mace cookies, due to their large size, usually ended up in one of the bigger tins, like the red tin with the green polka dot lid and a goose wearing a red ribbon. The snowball cookies would be piled in the red tin with Saint Nicholas on the top, their snowy coating of powdered sugar developing a thick layer at the bottom. Knowing exactly which colorful tin held our favorites, my brother and I (and probably Mom & Dad too) wouldn’t waste any time finding them when we snuck downstairs for a late night treat. 
Tin containers are incredibly versatile, and of course there are many different types of tins, not just those meant for Christmas cookies. There are tins for all different holidays and seasons, in all different shapes and sizes and colors. Before plastic containers came along, cookie tins were used for decades to transport treats to and from bake sales, picnics and other social gatherings.
Tins are fantastic sturdy containers and can easily be repurposed and used to store things other than what they were originally intended for. For example, in this 2013 thread on Reddit, people from all different countries around the world shared the memory that they had at one time in their lives opened a Royal Dansk Butter Cookie tin and found a sewing kit inside. Christmas tins are also a great option for storing delicate ornaments wrapped in tissue paper or other small decorations.
What about you? Do you have any memories of cookie tins as child? Do you still use tins today and if so, what do you use them for?
- Brittany
(Thank you to Dane Haskell for providing many of the photos used in this post)