It wouldn't be the winter holidays without a few polarizing food and beverage choices including questionable cookies, novelty-flavored candy canes, and of course, eggnog, a drink where people hotly debate what (if any) kind of booze to add, whether it's worth the bother of making it yourself, or whether it's even safe to drink something containing raw eggs. To throw one more question into the mix, would you consider the Puerto Rican drink coquito to be a subcategory of eggnog, or is it its own thing?

We won't take sides on the last-named issue, other than to note that eggnog, with its roots in medieval monasteries, is likely to be the older of the two drinks. It's possible that the Spanish introduced the drink to the Caribbean where it was adapted to make use of the rum that was being produced in Puerto Rico starting in the 16 century.

As eggnog is often made with rum as an alternative to whiskey, brandy, or other types of liquor, the rum isn't the key component that separates coquito from a more standard eggnog. If there's one difference that really stands out, it would be the inclusion of coconut milk (the name "coquito," after all, means "little coconut"), but even this ingredient alone doesn't tell the whole story.