I was thinking of macadamias myself when I voted “other”. But then I realized the OP had specified nuts you shell yourself and that rules out cashews and macadamias.
Trivia note: macadamia nuts are the only significant food plant that is native to Australia.
You can buy macadamias in their shells here.
You forgot the Salvation Army.
Oh, you mean THAT kind of nut! never mind
Around here the big bins of loose nuts appears in the produce section just before Thanksgiving and disappears just after New Years. I get a warm feeling seeing them in stores because Christmas is only a few weeks away.
We always have a big bowl filled with nuts on our table along with other holiday table decorations. It’s a tradition passed down at least three generations.
YMMV.
Pecans.
I win!
This. And…ours have lots of hazelnuts in them, so I take advantage of that fact, picking out the ones I want, and end up with tons of hazelnuts and brazils 
Cashews are the best, but you can never buy them in the (toxic-allergenic) shell, darnit!
Chestnuts. Open fire and all that, y’know.
And you can even grown them on your very own macadamia tree and spend frustrating hours trying to crack the shells. :mad:
My favourite nuts, 364 days of the year, are almonds and walnuts. On Christmas Day, however, I choose brazil nuts.
Don’t think I’ve ever eaten one. Or even seen roasted chestnuts for sale from street vendors IRL. How far south can you find them?
Pistachios can be opened in the dark and are tasty even in large quantities.
Pistachios are nut-crack. In my family we regularly make ourselves sick gorging on them, until I have to quit buying them so we can recover.
(Nut crack? Nutcracker? Get it?? :D) /lame joke of the day.
Chestnuts, pecans, and cashews all make me sick. Christmas is the only time of year it ever occurs to me to eat walnuts, and I do so with pleasure.
Filberts are my fav for the holidays. I like how they almost always come out of the shell whole and are quite tasty. I like brazil nuts’ flavor, but they’re such a pain to shell. And I learned of them as Brazil nuts first. Didn’t learn the other name from my mom until I was a teen. She said it was what they called them in very rural Alabama in the 50’s. Walnuts taste OK but are too dry to be great. And they’re a pain to shell, too. Pecans are nice, but not on the level of Filberts.
I really miss Southern Pecans. They taste good, and the pecan groves are beautiful.
So are magnolia trees, but I don’t believe they produce nuts :smack:
So “holiday” nuts are restricted to nuts still in their shells that you have to crack open? Why is that?
OMG. At the grocery store right before Christmas and my 60-something dad makes a beeline for the nut display and loudly proclaims, “Where are the N* Toes?”
I whipped around so fast I almost got whiplash and yelled, “DAD! We call them brazil nuts now!”
So embarrassing.
Anyway, I like walnuts! I like all the nuts! 
Wait – grocery stores used to use that name!?
Because shelled nuts would go stale in a bowl? 
Many people (like my family) have a decorative bowl as part of their holiday table decoration filled with nuts & a nut cracker on top. Anytime I visited a family member I always made a bee line towards that bowl of nuts. There often were chocolate marshmallow Santas and candy canes on the table too. it makes a nice decoration if its arranged carefully. Usually after our guests leave we refill the bowl of nuts and replace any eaten candy.
I don’t think so - it’s just that was the common name when he was growing up and it never occurred to him that it was offensive, and assumed everyone else knew what he was talking about.