The Christmas Fruitcake ©
I like all kinds of
traditions. I especially like the Christmas tradition of standing in long lines
at the post office to mail packages that have a high probability of getting
lost or
delivered six months later.
The term Postal Service is an
oxymoron. I like watching television reports of people standing in long lines
outside closed stores, in the middle of the night waiting for the store to
open. I enjoy the news showing the rush of people fighting, punching, and
kicking to buy some toy that the media convinced us we should own. I wonder if
that’s what is meant by tidings of good cheer? One tradition I don’t like
is paying off my credit card in January.
I like food and I like to
eat. I like the tradition of preparing treats that are only made at Christmas. It’s
fun to re-invent the learning curve because I forgot how to make an item during
the past year. It’s also fun to learn the same thing new each December. I think
that might be one definition of insanity. The added holiday stress is something
my Type A personality enjoys. So does my pharmacist because I have to load up
on anxiety medications. My heritage is German and Norwegian. We talk a little
funny but we enjoy our Christmas foods.
Each year at Christmas my
family makes potato bread and a cookie. The bread is called lefse. It’s a large
round flat piece of dough. It’s warmed in the oven, covered with butter, rolled
up and vigorously chewed with every bit of jaw strength one can muster. And
that’s just to bite off a piece. The Norse god, Odin, first had it served to
the souls of slain warriors because it would last an eternity. My brother,
Richard calls it reindeer hide. He doesn’t like the stuff. But he’s not much of
a traditionalist. Lefse is a Norwegian version of beef jerky. It can last
forever. Krumkake is a Norwegian waffle cookie that takes a long time to make.
Each cookie is made by hand one at a time. The first bite crumbles the cookie
into hundreds of tiny pieces. As a kid I always liked watching adults make a
mess. Uff-Dah!
There is one tradition I do
not like - that is the re-appearance each December of fruitcake, the most
disgusting food item ever created. Fruitcake was discovered by accident by a
Greek fella named Imus Disgustus.
He was sitting around one day
fully crocked on some fermented apple juice and felt creative. You probably
don’t know this, but he was the first person the see a chicken lay an egg.
There he was, soused to the gills and saw what appeared to be a white
oval-shaped thing fall from what he thought was the chicken’s butt. He
scratched his head and pondered. “Hey, we can crack that thing open and eat
it.”
Later that day, ole Imus was
out of his happy juice and was scrounging around his bachelor pad trying to
find more alcohol of any type. All he could find was dried up raisins, hardened
cranberries, crusty blueberries, chunks of cherries, fermented figs, dehydrated
apricots and he finally came upon some brandy. He thought he’d have some fun.
He decided to cook something
during his drunken stupor. He mixed the five-year old, dried up ingredients
with some flour, sugar, baking powder, allspice and baking soda. He tipped some
brandy into the mess for good measure. And presto! He created the first fruitcake.
The year was 1170 AD. There are still edible pieces of his original cake
displayed in Athens at the Martha Stewart Museum for Aged Products.
I got to thinking. Who in the
world should be given this disgusting, vile, repulsive food as a holiday
tradition? Politicians should be given fruitcake. The descriptions of the food
and the profession are the same. An added benefit might be their inability to
swallow and thus hinder their ability to talk. We could all prosper from that.
When a politician isn’t talking, there’s no lies being told.
I think we should give one to
our judges each December. Surely, they would write a court order of protection
that no normal citizen could be within a half-mile of fruitcake. Those folks
waiting in lines in the middle of the night at closed stores would be exempt
from that order because they are not normal anyway. Plus the name itself pretty
much describes those people – fruitcakes.
I gave a loaf to my neighbor
last year. He owned a dog that barked constantly. The neighbor fella must not
have liked my fruitcake. I saw the thing thrown out into his back yard. He
probably figured the dog would eat it. That dog has been trying all year to eat
and swallow the stuff. Ah-ha. I just noticed there has been no more barking.
Workers in the pharmaceutical
industry should be given fruitcake and forced to eat it. The side effects
include constipation, upset stomach, difficulty swallowing and nasty residual
taste, inability to speak for hours, loss of sex life (because all they are too
busy chewing), painful jaws, and seventeen others.
I sent one last Christmas to
some prisoners sentenced to life without the possibility of parole. I figured
it would take them that length of time to eat my gift. After all, fruitcake
does last a lifetime. It’s the gift that keeps on giving.
Some dentists set out trays
with bite size morsels in their lobbies. This stuff will chip or loosen a
perfectly good tooth after just three bites. I figure it’s good for the dental
business. But then, maybe some of the dentists just want to use their new
reciprocating saws they bought at Home Depot. I found that to be the best tool
to cut this stuff into pieces.
There is one time a person
should never eat fruitcake. Never attempt to consume this vile concoction if
you are scheduled for a colonoscopy in the next six months. The ingredients
will still be embedded inside and can appear as radioactive polyps. Then your
medical insurance rates will increase because you will have a new diagnosis.
Lastly, I don’t know of a
single person who claims to like fruitcake. If I hear of someone who claims to
enjoy fruitcake, I can never locate him or her for an interview. Trust me, I
have tried. They are nowhere to be found. That’s like the people who were
supposedly asked questions in a national survey or a political poll. I’ve lived
a long time. I know lots of people and never met a person yet who claims to
have been a part of some survey.
If you do ever meet one of
those folks, they are probably lying. I’ll bet they will tell you that they
like fruitcake also.
David Nelson Nelson
www.davidnelsonauthor.com
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