Fruitcakes and other Holiday Favorites

I know all the fruitcake jokes: the doorstop joke, the sneaking-it-to-an-unsuspecting-family-member-during-the-annual-gift-exchange joke, and the theory that there is really only one fruitcake out there, circulating continually throughout the world. Proponents of that last theory were obviously not with me on a recent bus tour of a fruitcake factory in Corsicana, Texas, nor have they seen the huge annual fruitcake display at my local grocery store.

Although I adore fruitcake in almost all its forms, those jokes do not hurt my feelings, nor do they even make me mad. First of all, we need all the jokes and laughter we can come up with in this sweet old world, and secondly, liking fruitcake is not a required life skill. Truth is, if it debuted as a new product this coming Christmas, it would never survive, much less endure, because it does not fit with contemporary lifestyles and tastes.