Struck Gold, uh, Fruit

I don't care about the low opinion which many people seem to hold about it, I like it. The holidays simply aren't here without it gracing the larder. I'm talking about fruitcake, one of my favorite holiday traditions. I put it right up there with the Bathroom from Hell. More on that later.

I love fruitcake, yet for whatever reason it was hard to find this year. Until yesterday. Our local supermarket finally had some in stock so I bought two. I didn't want to risk being left wanting.

Many folks see fruitcake the way they see candy corn during Halloween. I don't understand it on either count. Sure, candy corn is awfully sweet. It is pretty much just little triangles of sugar. But why is that a problem, a very non-diabetic Marty asks. It ain't like ya ain't gonna get too much sugar towards the end of each October. Or enough sugar. Or, uh, you know what I mean.

Wither fruitcake? It isn't particularly sweet and it isn't, as I've heard complained, rock hard. With a cup of hot coffee or cold milk it's not much different than lots of cakes and pastries. Where's the love?

But, whatever. I like it and I've got it. Let the Christmas season commence!

Christmas Treats

I don't care what anyone says, I always get two. And sometimes three.

I like fruitcake. I don't know why it gets such bad press. One of the joys of Christmas for me is fruitcake.

There. I said it. A lot of you are thinking it too.

Cosplay Christmas

I will confess up front that I am about to go way too far to relate a simple enough joke. But that's okay. I have the time to kill and apparently you do too.

Cosplay (you'll need to know this) is when you dress up for fun as a favorite character of yours from the fiction world, sort of like dressing up for Halloween or a costume party. To be honest, I used to mock it. Then they day came when I realized that when I am buttoning up one of my Detroit Tigers jerseys as I put it on I feel, if only for a moment, that I actually am a Detroit Tiger. So anymore I cut cosplayers a bit of slack.

Now, one thing that our family and a great many others have done for Christmas is get Christmas poppers. They're little gift wrapped sleeves with tiny gifts in them. You can read about them here:

https://www.whychristmas.com/customs/crackers.shtml  

What you do is you and a friend grab opposite ends of one of the poppers and pull. It pops open and you get the contents. Then you do it again so that the friends gets gifts too. 

It is a neat little bit of childlike fun, and while the gifts are only the trinket variety hey, remember, it's fun. Yet I've noticed that there is one common gift which seems to be in each and every popper: a small paper crown. You know, the kind with eight or ten points on it, just like Jughead Jones wore in the old Archie comics.

We were watching a Christmas special yesterday as a family in the show got out some poppers. Soon enough everyone was wearing one of those paper crowns. Soon after that someone else remarked, "Cosplaying Jughead is a treasured family tradition for us."

Look, reading this this far for that payoff isn't my fault. As I said earlier, you clearly had the time to kill.