Fruitcake

Did you like fruitcake? Did your family receive fruitcakes? Have you ever re-gifted fruitcake? Have you ever devised creative uses for fruitcake?

Fruitcake: the original gift that keeps on giving.

I don't have a lot of use for fruitcakes. I think that Kirk Talley in his "Fruitcake" (recorded on his Talley Ho, Ho, Ho album in the late 1990s) gave some of the best potential uses for fruitcakes when he suggested using them as doorstops or paperweights. I haven't checked to see if the song is available for download on iTunes, but you can purchase it via Kirk's store or get the song itself at Walmart.com for 88 cents. Trust me; the song is worth the 88 cents. I won't tell you what he eventually does with the fruitcake, but he's got some other creative uses in the song.

One of the salesmen who called on Mom at the hospital gave her a fruitcake one year for Christmas. Mom was working one night when we needed to take some sort of dessert for a Christmas event at the church. Dad called Mom to see if we could take her fruitcake to which she readily agreed. It was one of those fruitcakes that was in a narrow rectangular gold box. One of the men in the church asked Dad to get him "another glass of that fruitcake." Apparently, it was well-soaked. I think that's the last time we ever took fruitcake to church.

I've been fortunate that I've never received a fruitcake that I've had to regift. I would, however, give it to someone who eats fruitcake if I did receive one. I can eat a few bites of fruitcake if I'm in a social situation where it would be rude not to do so, but it is far from being my favorite Christmas food, and I could never make it through a whole one.