Sunday, December 4 is National Cookie Day, and bakeries across the country will look to provide these warm, gooey treats for the masses.

For almost 30 years, this has been a celebrated food holiday in America. It’s easy to see why this is a popular day, as cookies are enjoyed by hundreds of millions of people both young and old.

Here are some interesting facts about the incredible cookie:

• By definition, a cookie is a small flat or slightly raised sweet cake.
• The cookie gets its name from the Dutch word “koekje,” meaning “small or little cake.”
• Cookies are eaten in 95.2 percent of U.S. households. Americans consume upwards of 2 billion cookies per year.
• Cookies first made their way to America in the 1600s, when Dutch, English, and Scotch immigrants brought them over.
• The most popular cookie flavor, Chocolate Chip, was first invented in Massachusetts around 1937-1938 by Ruth Graves Wakefield, who published the recipe in her cookbook Toll House Tried and True Recipe. She invented the recipe during the period when she owned the Toll House Inn (a restaurant featuring home cooking) in Whitman, Massachusetts.
• In fact, the state cookie of Massachusetts is the Chocolate Chip Cookie.
• The U.S. has a National Cookie Cutter Historical Museum located within the Joplin Museum Complex in Joplin, Missouri.

How will your bakery celebrate National Cookie Day?