History of criss-cross marks on PB cookies?

I looked this up and here is what I found. I copied this from Yahoo Answers:

"It has become traditional to put marks with a fork on peanut butter cookies because it has always been done that way. The first cookbook with peanut butter cookies came from Ruth Wakefield’s Tollhouse in 1936. What is the thought behind the marks? Well there are a couple of trains of thought on this one. In fact, some of them are somewhat funny. Some think the criss cross is a warning. Others think it has religious undertones either good or evil! Still others think it is to mark the cookies so you know what they are. Remember some people have allergies to nuts. This would be one way to let them know the peanut ingredient within the cookies.

However, this one explanation makes sense. In the early 1930’s recipes began to tell cooks to make a criss cross pattern on the cookies. People also refer to them as hatch marks. It did not tell them why? Over the years, cooks have come to their own conclusions. One such conclusion is that it flattens the dough and thus making them crispier. I would tend to agree. Another reasonable explanation is that it flattens the dough so it can bake more evenly. In researching this topic, it seems that flattening the dough actually helps to keep the cookie dough together and uniformed. Otherwise, it may just crumble apart while baking. Could it be that all this guessing and hindsight is for nothing? Perhaps it is just a design for the cookie. Just something to dress it up? Maybe there is no real significance to the forked criss cross pattern after all.

Being a Christian myself, I like the thought that it has a religious meaning. It is thought that the marks are actually a holy image of the cross. This could have been a way to protect the people eating the cookies, which were probably your own family. That is a nice and protecting thought. So there you have the reasons and thoughts behind the criss cross marks made on peanut butter cookies. Which one do you think is true? The next time you have a peanut butter cookie maybe you will figure it out."

Peanut Butter Cookies are my favorite kind of cookie and I've often wondered why we press them as well. I've never looked online for an answer, but I did ask my mother about the reason for it. She said that the reason you press out peanut butter cookies but not any other kind of cookie is because the peanut butter won't allow the rest of the ingredients to flatten out so if you don't press them they will look more like balls than cookies.
Don't know if there is truth to this because I have never tried to make them without pressing them out, but it is definitely a question that I'd like to have the true answer to.

The reason I do it is because peanut butter cookies don't spread like other cookies do.

hi celestialbloom I have myown theory on why the criss cross'marks
on peanut butter cookies. I think some women were making a number of different types of cookies and someone thought her peanut butter cookies looked too much like some of the other kinds of cookies her friends were baking so she used a fork to make those familiar criss'cross marks we often see on peanut butter cookies.