Without taking the time to read every previous message first, I feel compelled to pass this along:

Due to a ridiculous oversupply of government-commodity oatmeal shared by a flood-victim friend, I've been making batch after batch of oatmeal cookies. By Christmas, I should have the process down pat.

The most important thing I've discovered:

Where the recipe calls for cinnamon (a half-teaspoon per batch, in the recipe I've been using), substitute Pumpkin Pie Spice, which is a blend of cimmamon, nutmeg, and allspice. It imparts a "holidays" flavor just below the level of consciousness. People won't be able to pinpoint just why the cookies taste so good, and so subtly different ~ they'll just enjoy them.

I'm sure you could simply use straight cinnamon and nutmeg and allspice, but the quantities might be tricky since I don't think they make measuring spoons smaller than a quarter-teaspoon. Not that I think the proportions are critically important; it's just that it would be difficult to measure out three different spices to make a total of one-half teaspoon. Plus which, whatever the proportions of the three elements might be in a given brand of pumpkin-pie spice, it's probably well-thought-out, and is certainly time-tested as well as (perhaps most importantly) familiar.

Also: learn from this mistake I made:

My recipe calls for manually "folding in" raisins as the final step, after machine-mixing all the other ingredients. I did so last week when making my first batch of cookies in many years, and the results were quite good, although I balked at the manual labor and was still unsatisfied with the uneven distribution of raisins throughout the dough. Second time around, I substituted "craisins" (dried cranberries) for raisins, which was OK, and mixed 'em in by machine, which was NOT at all OK.

Beating the dried fruit into the mixture by machine broke too many craisins open and released too much moisture into the dough, so the cookies didn't "stand up" through the baking process but instead "ran." When I took the cookie sheets out of the oven, each one contained, essentially, one big thin rectangular cookie.

I cut 'em apart while still warm and soft, and the individual cookies or "bars" had enough structural integrity after they cooled and became crisp. And, most importantly, they tasted just fine. But normal individual round-ish cookies a little thicker in the center than at the edge wuold have been far preferable. So, no more machine-mixing of the raisins or craisins or choc-chips or nuts or whatever...