Honey cakes, honey cakes with chocolate icing, made in a Danish bakery in Oakland, CA. My mom bought these for us every Christmas and boy do I miss them and my dearly departed mom too, of course. Christmas food memories is a subject I could get stuck on for hours. I tend to crave Danish food around this time of year but I have to make it myself and I don’t have enough time to do all I’d like. I visit online Danish delicatessens and wish I could see the sense of spending $35.00 for overnight shipping to get a pound or two of sausage here before it thawed.
Gingerbread dudes. I only eat them around now, I haven’t tried to make any lately though, maybe I should.
Kalaski - Little cookie-sized pastries with a date+walnut filling. When you roll out the dough, you use sugar instead of flour. Yummy and highly addictive!
I’m guessing you’re referring to “spritz” cookies, which are made with a dough press. We always made them and then dipped them in chocolate. Mmmmm…
Another vote for the Russian Tea Cakes–although when I make them I usually make them into rings, not balls.
Also–kolachki, a polish cookie with a flaky pastry wrapped around either fruit (raspberry or apricot) or nut filling. But my absolute favorite are the kruchike (totally not the right spelling, my mom would be so ashamed. :)). These are also called angel wings, and they’re basically deep-fried dough dusted with powder sugar. They’re long and twisted and very delicate. Excellent, and always looked forward to.
Eggnog…yum yum.
My MIL makes Buckeyes…peanut butter and powdered sugar rolled into little balls, then covered in chocolate.
Why can’t we have eggnog in July? Does it freeze well? Can’t TG Lee or someone put it out as a “Christmas in July” campaign?
Barnie’s puts out “Santa’s White Christmas Coffee” another yum yum.
Those chocolate orange things…don’t they have them in other flavors now?
Krumkakke are are a major PITA, but soooo worth it. I had to change my grandmother’s recipe this year (sacrilege!) though, because so much melted butter was coming out of the iron I was afraid I was going to light the kitchen. Not a recipe for Christmas cheer. Fattigman and rosettes, although I love them, are in the same PITA category since deep frying scares me.
Egg nog with Jack Daniels helps make the holidays brighter, too.
Pumpkin ice cream. Baskin-Robbins makes it seasonally…but why doesn’t Ben & Jerry’s make it? They would do it so much better!
And other seasonal goodies too numerous to count…why don’t we make some of them at othe times of the year? Whole-berry cranberry sauce (homemade) is one of my favorites, and it only takes a few minutes and one pan to make.
Fried tree mushrooms. My uncle (who passed away last February) would go and collect wild tree mushrooms every year. They’re sort of like a large white oyster mushroom. Then, he coats them in breadcrumbs and fries them, sort of like veal cutlets. You eat them by dipping them in homemade tomato sauce. Yum, yum, yum.
My other holiday favorite, also made by my late-uncle, are rice croquettes. You mix said homemade tomato sauce in with rice, wrap it around a tiny meatball, shape the ball into a cone, roll it in breadcrumbs, and fry. You eat them out of hand with salt (Or on a plate with a little more tomato sauce.)
This will be the first year that he won’t be around to make them. I’m going to attempt the rice croquettes, but I wouldn’t trust myself to pick the right mushrooms. 
My grandmother’s date-nut bread. Moist, not-too-sweet, and perfect. She would stay up all night long grinding up the dates and nuts so everyone in her neighborhood could have a loaf. Unfortunately grandma is long gone, and when my mom and her sisters found the old recipes at the house in New Jersey the ingredients went like this:
1 large basket of dates
walnuts, chopped
sugar
eggs, etc. etc.
Then it went on to say something like “bake in a hot oven until done.” I can’t imagine what mine might turn out like if I tried this. For some odd reason date-nut bread is near impossible to find in the DC area – we’ve been trying. I’d pay good money to have some sent here from a great bakery as a surprise to my mom and aunts.
Also –
No-bake cookies. The kind with oatmeal, cocoa, and peanut butter. They’re Mr. Winnie’s favorite, and the only cookie he requests this time of year. They’re worth waiting all year for.
Fruitcake. I actually like it quite a bit when it’s made well.
Spiked egg nog.
Champagne on Christmas Day.
Russian Teacakes.
My mom’s peanut butter fudge.
Eating sugar-cookie dough while attempting to make sugar-cookie cut-outs.
Farmer’s breakfast on Christmas morning – something my mother used to make that’s a big mish-mash of scrambled eggs, potatoes, diced green pepper, and bacon or sausage (or both for the hell of it!).
Sliced summer sausage.
My mom’s homemade Chex mix!
Mmmmmm… butter tarts mmmmm…
Keith
Braunschweiger on crackers
Gingerbread
Eggnog
Every Christmas my mom bakes a huge batch of potica (pronounced “po-TEET-za”) and gives some away, freezes some more loaves to be eaten at Easter, and then we would have a couple loaves for ourselves. It’s a bread that’s made by rolling out dough to cover your entire kitchen table, spreading on a filling with ground nuts, spices, and raisins, and then rolling wide strips into loaves. Yummy.
It’s been a tradition in her family for a couple generations, although for some reason it doesn’t taste the same if anyone else makes it.
Rosettes too, and those taffy-like peppermint Christmas candies that have a green pine tree in the middle and red stripes around the edge.
Sometimes we’d get rosettes at Easter too, I think, but those Christmas candies were obviously only available around Easter.
My mom will only make her family-famous ambroshia (SP?) around the holidays, it’s a shame because it really seems like more of a summer food, but we usually have it for Christmas.
Latkes. Nice and greasy.
German marzipan.
New (to me, anyway) this year: Silk soymilk eggnog. It tastes great and I can drink it, unlike real eggnog which I can’t drink because of lactose
Peppermint bark.
Buckeyes! Peanut butter, butter (yes, I know), and confectionary sugar rolled in a ball, then dipped in melted chocolate and parafin.
MMMMMMM!
Don’t know if they’re regional to Ohio, though.
Okay, I couldn’t stop thinking about it, so I ordered the peppermint bark from Williams-Sonoma.