One of my favorite topics:

1. Favorite cookie/candy/baked good without which, it's just not Christmas.
Our pralines, although we've had two botched batches so far this year. I don't get what we're doing wrong... I mean, it's really humid today, but we used to make them in Houston!

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?)
We have four evening services on Christmas Eve, and my favorite tradition is for R to bring dinner for the staff and spouses who have to be there for the duration; we all enjoy it between the first and second services.

This year, since we're traveling to Midwestern Capital on the 26th, we will be doing something simple for Christmas dinner. Like, "Trader Joe's or Chinese takeout" simple.

3. Evaluate one or more of the holiday beverage trifecta: hot chocolate, wassail, egg nog.
Wassail is my favorite, and it's the only one of the three that has a whole song about it. Two, actually:

Wassail, wassail all over the town, our toast it is white and our ale it is brown; our bowl it is made of the white maple tree, with a wassailing bowl we'll drink to thee.

And of course, Here we come a'wassailing.

Cocoa is great, but you can do that anytime.

Egg nog is nutmeg-flavored Pepto Bismol.

4. Candy canes: do you like all the new-fangled flavors or are you a peppermint purist?
Why oh why do candy companies feel the need to muck with perfection? I got a big fat handmade one recently and was crushed to discover it was cranberry.

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?
I have not, although the choral ensemble I was in did Madrigal Dinners each year in college, and it was sort of authentic... I remember Yorkshire pudding. But no figgy pudding.

Bonus: the crown prince of holiday foods--the fruitcake: Feel free to add your thoughts on this most polarizing holiday confection.
Sainted Church Couple gave us a loaf of yeast bread with candied fruit in it. It's a sign of maturity that I was able to give it a try, although it was not laden with them. I always eye the green ones with suspicion. Something not right about those.

R wonders whether candied fruit will be extinct in another generation or two. Before refrigeration I suppose it was one of those things one could do with fruit, but now there are lots more options, obviously. But maybe fruitcake will keep candied fruit alive. I've tried it. I didn't hate it.