You’re either in the OMG I’d rather drink hemlock camp with eggnog or a real devotee. It’s binary. No halfway house. You don’t sort of like the stuff. In case you missed the Christmas etiquette manual, eggnog has been a festive drink on the Yuletide menu for hundreds of years. These days, Americans are the nation that slurps it with most avidity.

I struggle to understand the eggcitement about eggnog, after a youthful close encounter of the egg drink kind with Advocaat. Eggnog is just warm, spicy custard in a glass. It might be more palatable with a spike of alcohol, but it beats me why you wouldn’t opt for a civilised mulled wine if you want cosy fireside comfort when snow is falling snow on snow outside. But different strokes for different folks. Each to their festive own.

As we’re in the run-up to the big day and eggnoggers worldwide start salivating in anticipation, I decided to do a little eggsploration to bring you the eggnog backstory.

Starting with an eggsplainer

Eggnog is pretty much what it says on the tin—an egg-based concoction with extras. That is a combination of egg whites, milk, cream, and sugar. You warm the mixture over heat until it thickens and becomes custardy, then flavour it with spices like nutmeg and cinnamon. It can be lightly or heavily “boozed” or virgin. You then serve the finished product either chilled like a punch or warm on those cold winter’s nights that are so deep … noel, noel, noel, noel .. (oops got a bit carried away with the theme there).

Eggnog—who thought that one up?
I wanna get a little drunk, but I also want some pancakes.”

Dave Attell.

All ages and stages, guzzle eggnog. You’d have to hope they don’t feed the spiked version to the tots, though, or they might be dashing through the snow for different reasons.

A festive delight or a pour it into the nearest pot plant dread?

Eggnog celebrants thrill to the nostalgia and romance of it all. Eggnog evokes sentimental flashbacks to happy (real or imaginary) childhood holidays, family gatherings, and days of comfort and joy. They might be nostalgic for Holywood’s take-a-la James Stewart classic It’s a Wonderful Life—incredibly still a favourite 78 years after its release. Moist-eyed, remembering the eggnog-infused glow that gilded past happy times, they make sure the hallowed tradition of Christmases past lives on for future generations. For these aficionados, it’s almost incomprehensible that others don’t like the stuff. They put it down to never having tasted a good one.

“Eggnog reminds me of mucus.”

Fangirl

Haters, on the other hand, find eggnog barfworthy. Eggscerable even. They demonise the cloying, rich heaviness and the underlying unpalatable eggyness, which leaves them frothing at the mouth. To the detractors, even alcohol doesn’t help the eggnog go down, no matter how many spoonfuls of sugar are involved. To these people, eggnog is more likely to induce an eggistential crisis than the aspirational Yuletide joy, love and peace. For them, no eggnog is a good eggnog.

It came to pass

Eggnog is a derivative of the early medieval British drink, posset. Posset combines curdled hot milk and wine or ale flavoured with spices. And you think eggnog sounds eggscrutiating! It was a posh drink—the upper classes were the only ones who could shell out the dosh for the milk, sherry, and eggs to make the posset.

How the transmutation from posset to eggnog happened is muddy, but who can explain evolution? OK, Darwin, for one, but you know what I mean. Here’s how it seems to have gone down. During the 1700s, an unidentifiable egg-based drink, which might or might not be a posset or an early eggnog prototype, stowed away on a ship and made a heroic Atlantic Crossing to the American Colonies. There, it became known as “egg-n-grog”, a mashup of ‘noggin” (wooden drinking cup in Scottish Gaelic) and “grog”( hard liquor such as rum). It didn’t take long for the catchier “eggnog” to stick, and eggnog it remained.

The American colonies were awash with milk, eggs and cream from swathes of chicken and cattle farms. They were also awash with cheap rum. So, eggnog became an equal opportunity drink rather than the preference of the privileged and landowning classes who promptly forgot about it back in the Home Country. Ultimately, it became a mainstay of the Christmas festive tradition in the land of the free.

The USA is eggnog central

 A YouGov Poll in 2020 found that about a quarter of Americans identify as eggnogers, i.e., eggnog is their favourite seasonal drink. That’s about 84 million people (based on the 2023 US Census Bureau figures). More than the total population of the UK (68.35m), more than three times the population of Australia (26.64m) and nearly 17 times the population of New Zealand. Eggstraordinary!

According to The Smithsonian Magazine, Americans consume more than 15 million gallons of eggnog annually—some 240 million cups of the stuff. Eek! Older Americans (50 +) are the eggy diehards—some sixty-one per cent saying they’re likely to break out the custardy goodness at Christmas versus only about twenty per cent of the under-fifty brigade.

Of course, I have no idea what the eggnog penetration rate was previously, so I have no idea if it’s gaining or falling in popularity. Twenty-five per cent is still a lot of people who love it…or lie to pollsters. Given the relatively low proportion of people under fifty who rate it, perhaps we’ve reached peak nog? Then again, rebellious youth often buck tradition only to return to them once families, jobs, mortages and other responsibilities arrive.

The eggnog has landed … elsewhere

According to Time Magazine, the eggnog Atlantic voyager also landed on the shores of Mexico, where residents revere it as “rompope” and Puerto Rico. Puerto Ricans clamour for “coquito”, which rejoices in the exotic addition of coconut milk. Kogel Mogel—great name—is a favourite of Jewish communities in Poland, and Germans have the popular homemade egg liquor, eierlikör.

Eggnog isn’t a Noel bonheur in La Belle France, although they do mange les Eggnog Madeleines with gusto. One reviewer I read called this combo—eggnog taste and Madelaine cake—a “match made in culinary heaven”. Magnifique—vive les Français! Still not feeling it, even with cake involved! But, the eggy-minded in the French Carribbean lap up laid de poule (milk of the chicken).

And then there’s Advocaat

The Dutch, of course, have Advocaat, the beverage that messed with my formative drinking psyche and put me off egg drinks for life. Dutch colonials appropriated the drink from the indigenous people in Brazil who made an alcoholic drink called “abacate” from avocado. The Dutch climate is not conducive to those warm-blooded fruits. You have to give it to them for innovation—they substituted eggs for avocados, which they thought would achieve a similar taste, and Advocaat was born. Advocaat means lawyer in Dutch and became their drink. Let’s face it, if lawyers like it…I rest my case.

Oh, dear god! Google just dished up something worse—Advonog. Or Advocaat plus Eggnog. This concoction has to disprove that the sum is more than the sum of the parts rule. Anyone’s stomach churning yet?

Canned, sealed, delivered… it’s yours

For many people now, eggnog is only something you buy, like custard, in a carton from a supermarket. Despite egg being integral to the whole idea, the commercial product can still claim to be eggnog with as little as 1% egg in the mix. A lot more nog than egg, you’d have to say. People most often drink it virgin—it’s not generally known that it can be a spiked drink.

Ultimately, whether you love or hate eggnog is a matter of personal preference. If you’re not a fan, happily, you can choose from a plethora of other enticing holiday thirst quenchers. I’m thinking the Ding Dong Merrily on High Champagne Cocktail (glass of fizz + sugar cube + dash of brandy). The Good King Wenceslas Kir Royale (Champagne and Crème de Cassis). Or the previously mentioned Mulled Wine (God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen recipe) for those looking for something to rejoice about.

If you’re in for an abstemious Advent, there is the classic Silent Night Virgin Mary. The SNVM offers the Christmas double whammy of your drink colour coordinating with your red and gold tree and acknowledging one of the key players in the Nativity. You could dab some frankincense on your pulse points to get further in the groove. But don’t get carried away—leave the asses in the stable where they belong.

Pavlova anyone?

We Brits mostly turn our noses up at eggnog—despite its Pommy posset roots. We see it as an American idiosyncrasy like biscuits and gravy and American football. I’m unaware of anyone whose holiday drink is a posset, but, like everywhere, we have our frolicsome foibles and favourites. We love our mulled wine, as noted above and what would the dinner table be without Christmas crackers? And Kiwis (in my adopted country, New Zealand) and our Aussie neighbours prefer our eggs in Pavlova form … mostly.

Whichever way you go, don’t get too egg-cited and eggsxpire from anticipation before the big day arrives.

Felice Navidad y’all.

---

What camp are you in?

Are you an eggnogger eggstraordinare or Grinch most grizzly when it comes to spiced custard in a cup? Share your thoughts and experiences in the comments below!

Check out my other December blogs for some more Christmas cheer

Sign up to receive the festive edition of my new Never Succumb to Beige newsletter, The Colourful Times, Festive Edition. Stories, Festive Quiz, funny meme collections, gorgeous Santas and, of course, tips on how not to succumb to beige this Christmas.