Yay! It’s getting to be that time of year again. You know what I’m talking about. Christmastime. The Big C. Merry Christmas! Happy Holidays! Seasons Greetings! And all that. The stores are full of bright, cheery Christmas decorations. Christmas trees are everywhere. Elves have sent their mute counterparts down from the North Pole to stand as unmoving sentries among the other seasonal trappings.
It’s the most wonderful time of the year. Okay, l plagiarized a bit on that one.
But best of all, it’s fruitcake season. And I do love me some fruitcake. For some reason I can’t figure out, lots of people scorn fruitcake. You can give homemade Christmas cookies, fudge and divinity candy to almost any friend or loved one and they’ll kiss you for it. But a fruitcake? Unless you’re absolutely sure that your special other person loves fruitcake as much as you do, it is an unpardonable sin, a ferocious faux pas and a huge no-no to give them out for Christmas. It’s also a surefire way to get put on Santa’s naughty list, not to mention going to visit your friend and seeing your culinary masterpiece being used as a doorstop. Or worse.
Fruitcakes hail back to the medieval ages. They have a long and proud tradition. There’s no record of anyone back then being hanged, drawn and quartered, burned at the stake or exiled for giving them as gifts. Back then, people were happy to receive them. Everyone back then LOVED them some fruitcake. What the dickens happened to change that?
Of course, the best ones these days come from old family recipes and are baked in the kitchens of Mamas or Mee-maws with the utmost of tender loving care. The fruit, those beautiful green and red candied cherries, have to be cut up just so. The nuts must be chopped precisely. The batter must be of perfect consistency. And, as always, a splash of rum, whiskey or sherry is a must. If you’re Irish, use Jameson. Bushmills will do in a pinch.
One year when I was on sea duty in the Navy, Mama baked a fruitcake, soaked it in bourbon, wrapped it in cellophane to conceal the smell, put it in a hat box and mailed it to me to share with my buddies, since we were far away and couldn’t be home at Christmas. Boy, was that a huge hit! A little group of us ate the entire cake in one sitting. When the Chief smelled alcohol, he came nosing around to see what was going on. I tried to explain to my infuriated boss that we’d been eating Mama’s fruitcake, shooting the bull and having a good time. Alas, the words came out all slurry. The Chief wrote us all up for being drunk on duty and we had to go to Captain’s Mast. The skipper, being a good Southern boy himself, took pity on us and let us off with a wag of his finger for not bringing him a slice. I snuck up to his stateroom that evening and gave him some bourbon balls Mama also sent along with the cake. Rumor has it that the Old Man was very merry the next day.
My Mama’s fruitcake was a traffic cop’s best friend. She infused her fruitcakes with so much booze that her girlfriends sometimes staggered to their cars when they came over for cake and coffee. Sometimes, you’d even find one passed out in the front yard. Our house smelled like a moonshine still when Mama was nursing her fruitcake along. A recovering alcoholic who dared take even a bite of Mama’s fruitcake fell completely off the wagon and had to start all over by confessing to his or her slip-up at the next AA meeting and picking up another white chip, no matter how many blue ones they had to mark their years of sobriety. I remember one year, the local police department set up a DUI checkpoint down the street from our house and 27 of Mama’s best friends had to make bail the next morning. One was a preacher’s wife. No kidding!
Alas, the most berated of all fruitcakes is the Claxton fruitcake. You can find them this time of the year, right up until Christmas Eve, stacked up like firewood in grocery and hardware stores everywhere, especially in the South, since they’re made in Claxton, Georgia. You’ll know one when you see it. A nearly footlong piece of treacly treat wrapped in gaily colored cellophane to preserve its freshness, they sing Merry Christmas as loud as Jingle Bell Rock. If giving away your Mama’s or Mee-maw’s fruitcake is sinful, giving away a Claxton fruitcake is considered to be the tackiest of tacky. And, as everyone in the South knows, a well bred Southerner would rather be shot than said to be tacky. It’s even a felony to possess them in some locales. Okay, I read that on the internet so maybe it’s not true.
Don’t give away a Claxton fruitcake to anyone, with one caveat. I’ll take one any day. Heck, I was shopping in the commissary at a nearby naval base almost a month ago just as they’d set the first batch of Claxton fruitcakes on the shelves. They do well on military bases because good military folk will eat what they’re darned well told to eat and if it’s on the shelf in the commissary, well, it’s because the brass wants it there and by golly, you’d better eat it.
As we were getting ready to check out, I saw the delicious candy and nut logs lined up like shiny tin soldiers on a shelf near the cash registers. Whoopee, I shouted to my wife, who suddenly didn’t know me. Look, honey, Claxton fruitcakes! I scooped up an armload of them, ate one in the checkout line, two more on the thirty-minute drive home, and stashed the rest in the freezer where I can pop them out, zap them in the microwave and enjoy them the entire holiday season without having to go back to the store and get the ones that are starting to go stale because fruitcake snobs won’t buy or eat them. Did you know they’re even delicious deep fried? Try it sometime!
My wife, being of third generation German heritage, should have a PhD in baking holiday goodies. She also makes fruitcake from a recipe a friend gave us some years ago. I don’t have Mama’s recipe because the last time she made one, the cops raided our house and confiscated it. Poor Mama never was able to replicate it just so and dear old Mee-maw had up and died and taken her recipe to heaven with her. Which reminds me, if you ever detect the smell of alcohol when your guardian angel rests on your shoulders, blame Mama and Mee-maw. Although I do love my wife’s fruitcake, I cannot resist a Claxton fruitcake.
Who knows where all the unsold ones go after the holidays? I suspect that large trucks steal in under cover of darkness on Christmas Eve after the stores close, box them all up and return them to Claxton, Georgia, where they’ll be freshened up and redistributed the next year. That’s my theory and if you know the real truth of it, I’d love to hear from you.
Last thing before I go. Anyone have any idea what a Claxton fruitcake soaked in booze tastes like? Being a recovering alcoholic, partly which I attribute to eating Mama’s fruitcake as a toddler on up to adulthood, I’ve never had the pleasure.