'Tis The Season To Get Memmed

Note: If you read this prior to 2:00 PM today, the answers below are slightly different from what you saw before, and there are some new questions that aren't part of the "official" meme.

I've been tagged with a holiday meme by my esteemed colleague at Chicken Butt, so here goes...

Christmas Meme

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate?
   Egg Nog. I prefer hot chocolate, but I can (and do) have that any time of the year. The nog is exclusively for December. I think this is more or less exactly how Dodi responded on her blog. You know what they say about great minds.
   


2. Does Santa wrap presents or just set them under the tree?
   Nowadays? Neither. The presents under the tree on the 25th are the same ones that were under there on the 24th, by and large. Now, in the olden days of my youth - it was both. A few wrapped, and a few open and ready for immediate use to keep us occupied while our parents slept.
   


3. Colored lights on tree/house or white?
   Colored. White is too sterile. You can put white lights up anytime of the year, like summertime parties. Multi-colored lights only mean Christmas to me. M prefers white lights, though, so we have both in our house. I guess it's all how you're brought up.
   


4. Do you hang mistletoe?
   I think we had mistletoe up last year. It was the first time for me.
   


5. When do you put your decorations up?
   Early December. We did put up decorations in M's apartment on November 27, the Saturday after Thanksgiving, two years ago, but I went along with that because I figured (correctly, so far as I know) that it would make for better atmosphere when I proposed to her.
   


6. What is your favorite holiday dish?
   There really hasn't been any dish that gets associated with the holidays for me. I'd say turkey, except that I've hardly ever had that at Christmas - it's mostly been a Thanksgiving-only dish. But it's also the only holiday-only dish I can think of.
   


7. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa?
   Which truth are we talking about? The fact that he's really Superman? (This joke courtesy of the PvP Holiday Special, the link to which I do not have here at work, but I can add when I get home.) Oh wait, you're talking about the other truth. I don't remember, actually. I know that I still believed in 1978 and maybe even 1979, and I'm pretty sure I bought it when the news said they were tracking Santa on radar on Christmas Eve 1980. I guess it was sometime after that.
   


8. Snow! Love it or Dread it?
   I believe I've gone on record that I believe that snow is punishment for our sins.
   


9. Can you ice skate?
   Kinda. I skated once or twice in college. It was easier than roller skating. I was surprised how easily I could walk on those skinny blades on the non-ice surfaces at the rink.
   


10. What is your favorite holiday tradition?
    We never really had a set tradition, really. But I guess the best Christmases were when my brother and I would get up, extricate the goodies from our stockings, and play with the unwrapped presents while waiting for our parents to get out of bed so we could get to the wrapped presents. Nothing fancy.
    

I'm supposed to tag someone else now, but the only other blog people I know that haven't already done this are BillygoatBartman and M's cousin. I don't know if either of them read this blog. But they can consider themselves tagged anyway.

Also, here are a few extra that were in a similar e-mail that M sent me a few weeks ago. All of the above questions were in that e-mail, but there were a few others too, so I figured I'd add them here in an unofficial capacity. I never got around to forwarding/responding to M's e-mail, so she's seeing my responses for the first time here.

1. Favorite Holiday memory as a child
   Getting up at 3 or 4 AM and opening every single one of my presents in 1976. That was fun. I did miss a calendar from my mom's Aunt Emily on my first sweep, so that was like a bonus present at 9 AM! Geez, I just realized that that happened 30 years ago this year. I have a vivid memory that's 30 years old. Gettin' old.


2. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve?
   I did for a while, when I was in my late teens/early 20s. My brother and I would open each other's presents then. It was always a computer game, and we almost always knew what we were giving each other ahead of time. In later years, we also got each other bags of candy (mostly Jelly Bellies) from the candy store in the mall. One year (1994, I believe), I was so grinched from working the Christmas season at CompUSA that my mind wasn't into Christmas in any way whatsoever and I forgot to get candy for my brother. I felt awful about that.


3. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree?
   Standing up, unless I need to put on an ornament way down low, in which case I'll stoop.


4. Do you remember your favorite gift?
   The Atari 5200 comes to mind. I also got a Millenium Falcon (toy, not the actual ship) that got a lot of mileage.


5. What's the most important thing about the Holidays for you?
   The pretty lights


6. What is your favorite Holiday Dessert?
   If I didn't have to make it myself, I'd say eclair cake. Even so, it's pretty good!


7. What tops your tree?
   A star, typically. When I was a kid, we had a cardboard star encased in foil. My mom made it. It worked perfectly well for me!


8. Which do you prefer giving or Receiving?
   For a while, I actually preferred giving to receiving, but I got over it. Giving is still nice, though.


9. What is your favorite Christmas Song?
   The Chipmunk Song.


10. Candy Canes! Yuck or Yum?
    Yum