I have a confession to make. 

I really enjoy the holiday movies on the Hallmark Channel and Lifetime.  I really, really do. Not the Lifetime movies about abuse or abandonment or tragedy. The "holiday" romance movies.  The Christmas "feel-good" movies where boy and girl get together at the end or a new family is created by the miracle power of the season.  I could watch those movies all the time if they could keep up with production.  It feeds the optimist in me. 

I’ve been leary about confessing this before but tonight I’m coming clean …

My name is Melissa and I watch Lifetime/Hallmark movies.

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

My mother’s Mamie Eisenhower Christmas cookies. Iced, decorated and waiting for me each year.  Can’t have Christmas without them.

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?)

My family gathers on Christmas Day for a nice meal – nothing fancy, smancy.  That isn’t us but definitely good eats and great company at my parent’s home.

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

Hot chocolate =  teenagers
Wassail = no clue
Egg nog = drinkable paint

4. Candy canes: do you like all the new-fangled flavors or are you a peppermint purist?

Peppermint purist

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?

Never had figgy pudding. And if it makes people refuse to leave, I will never serve it.