How ungrateful, I would have loved to have tried that, I really enjoy trying new foods from different countries. This is rather a hit-and-miss experiment though, since there are some things that I love and some things which I hate, but I'll give anything a go once.

Aghh what an annoying article... not your fault though jefro, your question is valid. But who cares if it's "Kate Middleton's favourite pudding"? Manipulative gold-digging bint. Anyway, that aside, no, that's a sticky toffee pudding, which, when done correctly, can be epic [I'm not saying that Felicity knows how to make a good one necessarily, but the picture looks decent].

A Christmas pudding looks like this and is often doused with cognac and set alight before serving. It's customary to hide coins in it for good luck, but I'm sure health and safety regulations have forbidden quite a few restaurants from serving it like that these days.

There's a popular legend in the UK that Prince Albert set up the first Christmas tree in England. Certainly he and Victoria always had one.

On Xmas tree origins, this is from the article I posted earlier [OK, I could write out something similar here but I would just be saying the same thing, so I may as well just quote it]:

It depends how many you make the first time.

Dennis

"Well, we shouldn't really be having too much sugar, so we'll just make the one..." - which is a _really_ good intention.

I had an English christmas pudding exactly once, I think.
It was store-bought, so probably not very good. I still remember the taste - something I don't have any difficulty eating (sweet, slightly bitter), but would never look forward to.

Speaking of traditional christmas food in general, that's an interesting topic!
My chosen home Finland is particularly strange... in the old days, the hardest time of the year for really poor farmers, it's mostly mashed root vegetables, baked slowly in low heat. At least that's the part I like the most (and is the most traditional I daresay). The slow baking brings out a lot of taste & sweetness.

There's similarly baked ham which, done right, is almost perfectly gray and melting on the tongue.
But in the old days, that was only for the rich...

Very probably also fish.

Dessert is rice cooked in milk, topped with cinnamon & sugar.

One thing I noticed when I was invited to an actual Finnish christmas once is that almost all food was of the kind that you prepare once, and then eat for many days.
I guess nobody was ever in the habit of spending most of christmas in the kitchen...