Batten down the hatches. Man the battlements. Call out the reserves.

The holidays are coming.

To some, they’re already here. To some, they began almost a month ago. I was watching TV the day after Halloween, which is to say Nov. 1, and every single commercial had a Christmas theme.

I am personally willing to concede that the holidays begin Thanksgiving and end on New Year’s Day. My wife, who is more of a stickler about such things, wants them to begin the week before Christmas — or preferably Christmas Eve — and last until Epiphany on Jan. 6.

Whenever one considers them officially here, we will soon find ourselves confronting the Mount-Everest-meets-the-Titanic enormity of the holidays.

All the cookies. All the cheer. All the vaguely queasy family angst that emerges like crocuses in the spring.

Already I have made two batches of pistachio-cranberry biscotti straws and a chocolate mousse pie with Chantilly cream, which is a sweetened, vanilla-flavored whipped cream. And the onslaught has just begun.

Don’t get me wrong. I love baking fattening things for other people. I especially love the part about licking the batter off the spoon and off the spatula and off the bowl and also the part about sampling a cookie or six before presenting them to friends and loved ones.

I love it, but my scale and my doctor are less impressed.

I used to enjoy hosting Thanksgiving dinner and especially bringing out the turkey that I had roasted on the grill. But that duty has fallen to my more centrally located brother (I represent the far western outpost), so I now enjoy his Thanksgiving dinner even though he makes his turkey in the oven and not on the grill.

It isn’t the Thanksgiving dinner that gets you, it is the other goodies that I feel compelled to eat while I am in my hometown. The family members who do not live there, including me, stay at a hotel chosen in equal parts because it is close to my mother, close to my brother and close to a particularly good ice cream parlor.

I mean, there are hotels that are closer to my brother.

There are some holiday traditions that I can avoid, if I put all my energy into it and shut down all sense of self. And by “some holiday traditions,” I mean eggnog.

Eggnog is one of those perfect concoctions that the gods, in their beneficence, have bestowed upon mankind for our fealty and devotion, like Dionysus giving us wine and Athena giving us the olive tree.

I stay away from it, but I still crave it. I even crave the stuff from grocery stores, though it contains high fructose corn syrup, regular corn syrup, fat free milk, guar gum, carrageenan, mono and diglycerides and disodium phosphate. But it’s easier to avoid when you know that.

Real eggnog is more tempting. I made the “Joy of Cooking” recipe for eggnog in bulk about 12 years ago, and I’m still trying to work off those last three pounds.

It’s worth it, though. If you’ve never tried it, perhaps now is the time. Life is short, and it may be significantly shorter if you drink too much of this stuff. A six-quart batch, enough to fill a punch bowl, requires a half-gallon of whipping cream, 12 eggs, 4-6 cups of liquor (your choice: dark rum, brandy, bourbon or rye), 1 pound of powdered sugar and a light sprinkling of nutmeg.

You can’t forget the nutmeg. The nutmeg brings it all together.

The recipe, incidentally, does not specify how many servings it makes, but it doesn’t really matter. No matter how many portions that punch bowl serves, it still works out to waaay too many calories.

On the other hand, those six cups of liquor may come in handy, even divided into dozens of servings.

With the holidays at hand, it’s the best way I know to batten down the hatches.

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