Full disclosure: I am historically not a Christmas person. Possibly because my mom relentlessly very much is, and is probably setting out her 900,000 Costco nutcrackers this week, along with the fake tree boughs and tinsel and hundreds more Xmas tchotchkes. She has a singing animatronic Santa hat that she makes people wear when they come over. The sparkly feeling that y’all get from… doing that… and wearing antler headbands and baking gingerbread and listening to Celine Dion on purpose? Like, I’m happy for you. I just don’t get it.

However. I’m an absolute weeb for secular wintertime cocktails. Lay them on me. Pour all the egg nog and spiked cocoa and hot buttered rum and dirty chai and maple toddies down my throat all at once right now. Glögg, wassail, that extra-redolent orange-cinnamon tea from Market Spice in Pike Place. The drinks don’t even need to be warm, just festively spiced. I’m getting the sparkles just from typing this. 

Since, what?, Halloween, I’ve been serially slurping up all these cozy beverages all across our town and there’s been some obvious divas among them. Hattie’s Hat in Ballard has a hot cocoa with Rumple Minze AND Meletti Cioccolato amaro that’s decorated with a mini-cane and a hat of whipped cream—the perfect accoutrement for karaoke in Aunt Harriet’s Room on Thursday nights. Rumba on the Hill is serving the elusive-around-here coquito, a rummy Puerto Rican fave with coconut milk, condensed milk, vanilla, a house rum blend, and all the PSL spices. And every Tuesday at 6 pm, Prost! in Greenwood does a feuerzangenbowle (“fire-tongs punch” in German) ritual, where they take a big communal bowl of red wine with orange peel and cinnamon stix and star anise and a rum-soaked sugar pyramid in it, then set it on fire before doling the wine out to the crowd in mugs. Everybody claps. It’s really something.

But there’s one drink that stands out in sharp relief among them. Seattle’s best holiday-season cocktail of 2023 is Kevin!, from the Sitting Room’s very clever Home Alone-themed menu. For the second year, owners Shaun and Marissa Pfeifer have gone hard as a motherfucker with not only the decor—a tree and all the lights and the barstools dressed in red velveteen Santaclothes and manifold movie quotes transformed into word art!—but also with an extensive list of cocktails named after references to the 1990 Chris Columbus-directed comedy classic. 

Corny? Yeah, man, but so’s Christmas. And like so many swinging paint cans to Daniel Stern and Joe Pesci’s faces, every one of these drinks is a slapper. 

The reason the Kevin! is the greatest among them, first, is because it is gilded with not just bourbon but FIG-INFUSED bourbon. If that weren’t enough, the nog’s also laced with rum, Armagnac, edible gold stars, and Biscoff cookie crumbles suspended on the surface. Which… I know, the whole purpose of the Biscoff cookie is to pair it with a hot beverage—coffee is right there in the name—but the act of crumbling them seems to level the effect up times infinity. Maybe I hallucinated this, but I say the scent of the buttery cinnamon-caramel cookies gets more, uh, activated this way too. They don’t smell this good on a shitty cattle-class airline flight, that’s for sure. One hundred percent adding smashed-up Biscoffs to my life’s dairy-based cocktails from now on—what a great idea.

The bourbon is from Four Roses, then figged in-house—it’s fig-flavored in the way that dry wine is, if that makes sense, not jammy like a Fig Newton. The rum’s Plantation Original Dark, a blend of Barbadian and Jamaican, and is one of my go-tos for mixing, since they age it in cognac barrels and it gets that plummy-caramelly-clove effect. The Armagnac is a small part of the recipe, but it’s by Chateau de Millet 2-year VS French brandy, and it adds an extra vanilla whisper across the top. All of these elements work to complement the base of heavy cream and egg yolks, naturally, and make this cocktail super dessert-like. It’s like drinking a boozy crema catalana. 

It should be mentioned that not every rendition of Kevin! seems to arrive with the edible gold stars, and it could vary by bartender. You should ask for them. They’re pretty. You want them.

No surprise that the Sitting Room goes to these extravagant heights for its egg nog, since the Lower Queen Anne bar-resto has a rep for punny and elaborate concept drinks. Everything you order from the cocktail list here will invariably arrive with a novelty swizzle stick or a preserved flower or a mini Matchbox car perched on it. E.g., The Fuller! Go Easy on the Pepsi! from the current menu comes with a tiny cloisonné Pepsi hanging from the metal toothpick. Of course. 

The Kevin! isn’t available as a nonalcoholic nog, but there are two NA cocktails on the list that I dig, especially the holiday-ey Les Incompetents, with virgin apple vodka, apple cider, ginger beer, and New Orleans bitters. The Kevin! IS available to go, though, in 12-ounce or 16-ounce bottles. Co-owner Shaun adds, “You can also get a special glass Home Alone decanter with one of two labels—one is Kevin McAllister’s little cartoon battle plan against the robbers, and then the other one is just a collage of images from the movie. It’s a large decanter, at 26 ounces, so it fits a LOT of nog in there.”

Speaking of battle plans, the cocktail of the same name is in second place here. It’s a clarified milk punch made with mezcal, sherry, agave, plum, grapefruit, lime, and tonka bean, then topped with a grapefruit-sage foam and garnished with a cool skeletonized leaf. The inclusion of tonka bean in the Battle Plan is compelling; those things were illegal in the US until a few years ago because they contain coumarin, which can be toxic to one’s liver in enormous quantities. (Probably also because it’s a main ingredient in warfarin, and the FDA didn’t want people trying to manufacture their own blood thinners.) A member of the pea family, the wrinkled tonka bean is native to South America and brings cherry, almond, and cinnamon flavors to the game. You usually see them added to ice cream and pastries, sometimes perfume. Happy to see you stateside at last, tonka. 

To wrap this up, although I hate Christmas, I’m grateful this holiday season for this fancy-crunchy-fabulous take on eggnog, holiday drinks in general, and the ridiculous fun and artistry with which Shaun and Marissa have styled their current cocktail list. Alongside being a giant mark for a cocktail with flowers and toys all over it, I think the drinks themselves are all brilliant, with or without the kitsch. 

Turns out, I am no cooler or better than my mother. I just prefer my tchotchkes in my drinks instead of on the mantelpiece. Merry Christmas, Mom; maybe we’re not so different after all.