My company held its annual cookie swap today, and it was probably the best swap we’ve had since I’ve been on board. Ah, the buttery, sugary goodness. Hooray for yoga pants in these, the holiday months.

What’s more, I’ve been seeing cookie swap recipes and party ideas everywhere lately, prompting me to believe they must be regaining trendiness, at least in corporate America. I imagine they’ve been steadily popular in schools, churches, and community centers for years and only now are emerging as an interactive, low-cost approach to holiday gathering in the office.

Here’s how ours works:  would-be participants sign up on a sheet placed above the copier by our resident Angela. Once you sign up, your participation is nothing short of mandatory, as a controlled number of cookies must be determined before any swapping can begin.

This year, nine folks signed up, creating a need for 36 cookies from each participant, bagged into groups of four. This leaves one bag of one’s own cookies for each person, but I think this safety has been built into the math to prevent any swap disasters if someone takes ill or is unable to fulfill their duties. We don’t argue. We just make our cookies.

An hour or so before day’s end, we gather in the conference room with our cookies: bagged, sometimes decorated, and ready for trading. This year, we sweetened the deal with salty snacks and a little vino on the side. Armed with the bags, boxes, or baskets our cookies came in, we then proceed to prance around the conference room table gathering one bag of goodies from each swapper. And when I say prance, I don’t say it lightly. There’s something about the layout of the conference room or the act of circling the table in a semi-hunched position looking for goodies that creates a weird sort of gait among cookie swappers.

In the end, it’s a little like Halloween; at work, and without costumes. Although Annette looked a little like Annie Oakley today.

Our bags morph from offerings filled with baked goods to treat bags filled with yummies ready to be nommed. I made chocolate peanut butter chip cookies this year, having lifted the recipe from the Reese’s peanut butter chip bag.

These were the spoils:

– Soft gingerbread cookies

– Pizelles

– Oatmeal cranberry dipped in white chocolate

– Linzer cookies

– Traditional chocolate chip

– Junior Mint chocolate

– French macaroons

– Peppermint sugar cookies