Michelle answered these questions a few days ago, and so I thought I’d give ’em a go as well. I need to warm up, anyway, for Carl’s G.I.F.T. Challenge!

1. Egg Nog or Hot Chocolate? Funny, but my default response was to answer in Latte mode (how sad is that?). So…I think I’ll modify my answer–but only slightly. I like Egg Nog straight up, but not in the latte format, and in very small doses. Hot Chocolate, however, when prepared with milk and tons of marshmallows and drizzled with caramel, is my absolute fave.

2. Does Santa wrap presents or just sit them under the tree? What? Santa doesn’t wrap the presents for everyone? Is there something that somebody is not telling me?

3. Colored lights on tree/house or white? The tree is adorned with red and white lights (we’re having a fit right now that the white lights are on a white string–what were they thinking?). Outside, anything goes. We have white. We have red. We have green. We have blinkies. We have lights, Lights LIGHTS!!!!

4. Do you hang mistletoe? There are random mistletoe sightings throughout our house, but kisses are never contingent upon the placement of interior shrubbery.

5. When do you put your decorations up? We begin the day after Thanksgiving, but it usually takes us a week to get the tree up and the lights plugged in. Once those two things happen, there’s no holding us back through New Year’s Day.

6. What is your favorite holiday dish, excluding dessert? My wife makes a killer Autumn Pudding. I know, I know; it sounds like a dessert, but it is really a phenomenal sweet potato creation that sends its consumer into the next stratosphere with unrelenting delight… Yum!

7. Favorite holiday memory as a child? Without a doubt, it is waking up very, very early with my sister on Christmas morning, and the two of us shaking gifts for hours before our parents woke up (or before we woke them up…). Now, being a dad myself, I have to think that my parents always knew that we were up, and they were just clinging to as much peace and quiet as they could until we rocked them out of bed…

8. When and how did you learn the truth about Santa? Truth? Oh–Um, it was actually an indirect discovery. A week before Easter, I was cutting wood with my dad, and I said to him, “Dad, there’s no such thing as the Easter bunny, is there?” He answered, and I realized it was an across-the-board type of coming-of-age, loss-of innocence realization. I then excused myself and told my dad I needed a moment to be alone. I cried a little, then shook it off, and continued chopping wood (a little more aggressively, I daresay). I wasn’t happy at all.

9. Do you open a gift on Christmas Eve? We usually open a gift or two from relatives whom we won’t be with during the holidays…but no other gifts find their way under the tree until after Santa visits…(of course! Duh!).

10. How do you decorate your Christmas Tree? Over the years, our tree has become a collection of the kids’ homemade crafts blending nicely with a few family ornaments that Amy and I have inherited. We drizzle it with silver beads, but no tinsel (no need to tie our kitties’ intestines into shimmery knots…).

11. Snow: Love it or dread it? Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love Love it….

12. Can you ice skate? I thought you’d never ask. My wife introduced me to skating when we first met 13 years ago. I gravitated toward hockey skates, which I became pretty proficient with on the ice. But then we got this cute idea that we could dance on the ice together, and so I switched over to figure skates, where I immediately gravitated toward the ice, time and time again (toepick!). Ah, the lovely memories my soon-to-be wife and I spent on the couch nursing our broken ribs…. 🙂