1. Favorite cookie/candy/baked good without which, it's just not Christmas.

My older sister's Raspberry Christmas Strudel. The filling is tart, the bread is yeasty, and the icing is so sweet it makes your teeth hurt. Combined it is THE yummy start to every Christmas morning back in the Bayou City. Runner up? Gingerbread Bites...a specialty of a lovely woman in my congregation....Little iced bits of spicy heaven. :-)

2. Do you do a fancy dinner on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, both, or neither? (Optional: with whom will you gather around the table this year?)

Christmas Eve is a work night. After our candlelight service I have no rituals, I've done it differently every year. Christmas Day, if I stay in Chicago, is spent with friends. For the last 3 years, I've had lunch with a buddy--sometimes just us, sometimes with friends from his gay running/walking club. The last two years, we've done brunch at a Middle-Eastern restaurant. AWESOME food, good company. This year, he has a boyfriend and I'm flying home on Christmas Day to be with Dad and the rest of the Texas family. (EDITED TO ADD: Shhhhh. It's a secret. Mom and Dad don't know that I'm flying in.)

3. Evaluate one or more of the holiday beverage trifecta: hot chocolate, wassail, egg nog.

Wassail is a personal favorite, but I dislike it when it's weak and boring and tastes like warm apple juice. I want SPICES galore!

The Nog is Nasty, nuff said.

Godiva Instant Hot Chocolate made with steamed milk instead of water is the reason God invented Lactaid.

4. Candy canes: do you like all the new-fangled flavors or are you a peppermint purist?
There is only one REAL kind of candy cane---red and white, peppermint. The others may be tasty (particularly the pink and burgandy cinnamon one I had last week) but those should properly be called "Fancy Canes" or some other moniker, for they are NOT candy canes. But see this for a different opinion. (Candy canes can be dipped in chocolate, but any cane that purports to contain chocolate flavor is just wrong.)

5. Have you ever actually had figgy pudding? And is it really so good that people will refuse to leave until they are served it?

Yes, at a fancy lawyers party in Houston a number of years ago. It was touted as a traditional recipe. It was interesting, but not very pleasant on the palate. If it was the only sweet on the Christmas table (not uncommon I would imagine in some earlier era), I might eat it again.

Bonus: A question about the crown prince of holiday foods--the fruitcake. Add your thoughts on this most polarizing holiday confection.

My mother's fruit cake cookies always tasted too much like the brandy she put in them, I thought, but they sure smelled great cooking. As for the cake itself, nuts plus preserved/plasticized candied fruit equals a digestive nightmare for me, so I'll pass, thanks. That being said, a fruitcake that is more cake than fruit and that contains no nuts and no brandy...that can be some good eating.