Every 24 seconds between now and Christmas Day, an innocent American will receive a fruitcake.
Why?
Go ahead. Call me a Christmas conspiracy theorist. I want answers to the mystery behind this holiday tradition that no one seems to embrace.
My Introduction to Fruitcake began in childhood. It was traumatic. It left scars that exist to this day!
My Dad was a muckety-muck within the City of Chicago hierarchy. At Christmas time, it behooved (everyone needs a good behooving now and again) certain other muckety-mucks to remember Pops at Christmas. Weeks before the big day, our doorbell frequently rang as Dad’s associates sent “thank yous.” Dozens of fancily wrapped bottles of alcohol products, candies, and Marshall Field Gift Certificates (Mom got those) arrived at our bungalow. Dad enjoyed the various boozes.
We loved the Fannie Mae chocolates!
From time to time though, someone (usually wearing a mask) would drop off a purple cylinder of substantial weight. The purple was laced with white Christmas scenes, but purple is not a Christmas color and these Cylinders of Doom didn’t seem to fit among the red bows and Poinsettia plants.
I was about 5 or 6 when one morning, Dad, perhaps angry over Mom’s spending or in the wake of daybreak road rage, decided to share his Fruitcake Bounty.
The purple cylinder landed on the kitchen table with a “thunk”. Cakes should never “thunk”. At most, the cake should “thud” softly.
“What’s in there, Dad?” I inquired with true kid inquisitiveness.
“A fruitcake, Gregory Benjamin, a fruitcake. I think it’s time you experienced one of these”, resignation ringing in his voice.
I balked. I never had to be prepped to love coffee cake, donuts, or pastries. The silverware rattled when he dropped the big round mound, mummified in cellophane, hoisted from its purple coffin and onto its resting place. Dad crisply removed about 5 yards of crackling plastic, and the air immediately smelled of old raisins.
Dad took a butterknife and began sawing through the pale yellow cake. I stared at the slices suspiciously. I took a bite, expecting a pallet full of soft, sweet, melt-in-your-mouth goodness. Instead, that initial morsel sucked the moisture out of my mouth, leaving a texture akin to infield dirt. It took an hour to crawl down my throat, landing in my belly the next day.
Don’t get me wrong. I wanted to enjoy it. I like fruit. I like cake. It was neither.
A layer of butter often cured a dry Danish or coffeecake so I reached for the golden elixir. I slathered it on with the zeal of a bricklayer! Surely, this will make it far more palatable.
Disappointment and heartache haunted my dreams. Fruitcake is the only baked (poured) good that doesn’t heal with butter.
The label said the wheel of dry fruitcake was embedded with dried fruit and raisins. Dried everything. Butter disappears into its gaping pores. After further study, I concluded it was embedded with dried Dots, the chewy colorful movie theater candy rarely eaten outside the cinema.
Years later, when Pops opened another purple tin, I thought microwaving a slice adorned with a lump of butter might enhance the edibility of the fruitcake.
Twenty micro-seconds yielded the same dry result excepting the round yellow spot where the butter sat.
In the realm of baked goods, The Fruitcake is a species unto itself. I question its status as a baked good, period. I suspect the batter for these babies comes out of a long chute dangling off the back end of a truck with a big, spinning drum. Are they baked? Or are they poured to simply harden?
Local realtor and radio sidekick Eddie Bader and I formed the Big Snack Commission (NewsTalk 93.1FM) to test and recommend (or not) the glut of holiday treats at this time of year. We did an entire on-air segment on the vast Little Debbie Empire, certain her Christmas treats would disappoint. With help from Rosie Brock and Ellen Murray, we universally agreed Little Debbie might be killing us with calories, but she was a tasty way to go.
More recently, Eddie asked if I was willing to take on Big Fruitcake. It’s science, so I agreed. Lives and debit cards are at stake.
Eddie couldn’t find the traditional FC in the purple cylinder, so he produced what I called a “stunt” fruitcake. It couldn’t be sliced. I plunged the knife into it with the frenzy of Norman Bates, but it merely made a hole. I ripped it with my hands to expose the inside, which was more like yellow bread. Just like the childhood experience, the interior was lined with colorful specks of alleged fruit, and they, too, had the texture of Dots.
We fetched a Black and Decker tool from our engineer’s cache and cut it in half. Rosie said someone would appreciate it, so she took it, never reporting where it went or how many survived.
Listeners called to report a fruitcake brand called “Claxton” that’s pretty decent. Maybe it is.
Johnny Carson once theorized that only one fruitcake is produced every year. Nobody wants it, so it gets regifted around the entire world at Christmastime.
I think he was onto something.
Merry (fruitcakeless) Christmas BOOMers!
Remember, at this magical time of year, every time a bell rings, an angel gets its wings.
And someone, somewhere, is staring down a brick of fruitcake, asking, “Why?”
Greg Budell lives in Montgomery with his wife, Roz, and dog, Brisco. He’s been in radio since 1970, and has marked 19 years in the River Region. He hosts the Newstalk 93.1FM Morning Show with Rich Thomas, Susan Woody, and Jay Scott, 6-9 AM Monday – Friday. He returns weekday afternoons from 3-6 PM for Happy Hour with, Rosie Brock and a variety of sidekicks. Greg can be reached at gregbudell@aol.com.