Figgy pudding

Bring it or set it on fire.

Rarely will my gun-toting, eagle-saluting American ass allow the British to gloat about anything unchecked. But I do have to allow them their sense of superiority in all things Christmas.

They get it. Victoria and Albert were there to take the best of German tradition and turn it into something extra. Charles John Huffman Dickens scribbled it all down and made it a whole morality lesson. They’ve got Christmas crackers and television specials. They’ve got brandy butter on mince pies and the Queen’s speech.

But perhaps most iconic of all is the Christmas pudding.

The Great British Bake Off helped demystify the pud for American audiences, but it still strikes us as equally extravagant and disgusting. It’s all suet and raisins, and yet you soak the whole thing in brandy and light the motherfucker on fire.

Most of us not located in the UK were probably introduced to figgy pudding through “We Wish You a Merry Christmas,” which was a bit of a punchline with my schoolyard friends, something we assumed they just made up for the song, not unlike sugarplums. (If you are outside of The States and are somehow unfamiliar with what Americans call pudding, lmao.)

The closest Americans have come to an iconic Christmas dessert is probably the fruitcake, which isn’t American at all and is mostly hated. People trot out Yule logs, but the fact that it’s called a Bûche De Noël is the end of discussion there. In the South, we do a whole mess of candy, but it’s not like I’d slap some divinity on a holiday jumper.

I guess we’ve always got eggnog.

If you’re looking for a recipe and a little more history, I’m naturally going to refer you to muh boy: