There are, of course, a lot of recipes for shortbread—and consuming it is hardly limited to Christmas.   However, although, when I was a child, she did sometimes make it at other times of the year, my mother always made shortbread for Christmas; and I have always associated it with that season.
        I once read through a book of Scottish recipes that had versions of shortbread from many different parts of the country, each one of them differing from the others in some slight particulars.   The proportions of ingredients varied a bit, or there might be the addition of rice flour, or some wholewheat flour, or even spices.   Furthermore, some versions were made thick and others thin, some cut out before baking and others broken into pieces after—these alterations affecting texture rather than taste.   My mother's recipe is simple, but nevertheless distinct.

Ingredients

Directions

Making the Dough
Cream the butter and sugar.   Add the flour, and work well together.   The result is fairly dry, and does not cohere as a single mass.   This is not an error, and you should not add more butter to try to get the ingredients to stick together.

Scoring the Dough
Press the shortbread dough into an 8 inch round pie plate.   (If desired, the pie plate may be lined first with foil wrap.)   With a sharp knife, cut the dough in the following way:

	cut a circle about 1½ inches in diameter in the centre of the dough;
	surround this with three concentric circles, equally spaced;
	using radial cuts, score the dough into quarters, leaving the central disk intact;
	using radial cuts, score through the quarters in the outer two circles, dividing them into eighths;
	using radial cuts, score through the outermost circle, dividing each section in two to produce sixteenths.

The resultant pieces, save for the inner circle, should be approximately one to two inches long and half to one inch across.   As the shortbread is fairly thick, most of the pieces will be roughly cubical, save for the curvature and the irregularity of the cuts.

Baking
Bake the shortbread in a 325°F oven for about three quarters of an hour, until it is a light golden brown in colour.   Remove it from the oven, and allow it to cool in the pan on a wire rack.
        The shortbread can be broken into pieces as soon as it is cool.   Alternatively, the entire shortbread can be lifted out of the pan and stored in a tin; and pieces can be broken off as needed.

Makes 28 smaller pieces and one large one.