Sweet dreams are made of these

“Binge eating” isn’t quite the phrase I’d use for my eating habits this time of year. Maybe “chain eating." Defined as shoving food in your mouth while still chewing the previous mouthful, making for a constant flow.

I’m not saying I do this kind of eating nonstop through the holiday season. But it’s not for lack of trying. For example, I've wondered if I could puree a mixture of holiday sweets and pour the viscous soup into the water chamber of my sleep-apnea CPAP machine, so I could just breathe it in while I sleep. My wife probably would have to peel myself off the ceiling every morning from the overnight sugar high, but that seems a small price to pay.

I suppose this would end badly, though, with me the subject of one of those Associated Press odd-death briefs that show up in newspapers all over the country. Headline: "Man Asphyxiates in Sleep; Nasal Passages Found Clogged with Chocolate." No doubt, some smartass copy editors wouldn't be able to resist the obvious "Death by Chocolate" joke at my expense. I know I'd go there if I were writing that head.

(By the way, do any of you have moments in your life when you're doing something monumentally dopey or careless that, if something goes awry, could end in a very messy, embarrassing, but undeniably hilarious death, and you think, "damn, this could make for a helluva story, might even make 'The Daily Show,' or at least the network TV news, as an end-of-broadcast item, after which the anchor would shake his head ruefully and try, unsuccessfully, to suppress a smile?" And then you imagine people at your funeral, torn between mourning your untimely demise and laughing hysterically about your idiocy? And your spouse and kids dealing with the mixture of sadness and humiliation at work and school, respectively? No? I'm the only one who imagines this? Well, never mind then.)

Geez, that was an unfortunate digression in the middle of musing about holiday-eating, wasn't it?

Not all holiday sweets are created equal, of course. I mean, in a pinch, yeah, I’ll eat a piece of divinity or maybe even some gas-station peanut brittle. But those aren't my first choices. Or 10th.

I admit I'm a bit of a traditionalist, drawn to the Christmas sweets of my youth. Three favorites:

-- Fudge. Now, things can get ugly here. Buffet tables have been overturned, fists thrown and candy thermometers shoved into bodily orifices over this argument: Should fudge have walnuts or not? I'm a no-nut man myself – keep your jokes to yourself, please. Don't get me wrong -- if stuck with nothing but walnut fudge, I can manage. I'm not going to NOT eat fudge, after all. So, I've mastered the trick of putting a piece of walnut fudge in my mouth and slowly eating the chocolate from around the nuts; it takes a lot of saliva and some pretty complicated tongue movement -- OK, go ahead: That's what she said! -- so it's not for amateurs. Then I find a spot where I can discretely spit out the walnuts.

-- The homemade Christmas sugar cookie. Some people prefer them plain and unadorned. But they are wrong. Frosted and loaded with sprinkles and other decorations is the only way to go, with extra points for Red Hots as noses and buttons. The homemade Christmas cookie is made with loving care, warmth and, often, a child’s disgusting, grubby hands, so make sure the snowman's raisin eyes actually are raisins before you eat them, OK?

Indeed, for me, the smell of Christmas cookies baking is the smell of Christmas itself. To walk into a home filled with that aroma is to know you are in the presence of love, warm-heartedness and good cheer. And even if the home in question doesn’t, in fact, have any of that, it still has cookies. So, grab a couple and get the hell out before the family starts fighting over fudge again.

-- Then there are those old-fashioned hard Christmas candies -- ribbon shaped, round, square, and so on. These were ubiquitous when I was a child; you'd find them in little bowls here, there and everywhere. I don't see them so much anymore. The problem is that after a week or two, they tend to meld into one solid chunk of candy. Maybe it's the humidity in the air. Or maybe the same grubby little angel that made those Christmas cookies has been licking them and then putting them back into the bowl.

Or it could be some idiot has been spitting saliva-soaked walnuts into them.