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Merry Christmas!
25 Sunday Dec 2011
Posted It's A Gay World, The 12 Gays of Xmas
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25 Sunday Dec 2011
Posted It's A Gay World, The 12 Gays of Xmas
in≈ Comments Off on Merry Christmas!
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24 Saturday Dec 2011
Posted It's A Gay World, The 12 Gays of Xmas
in≈ Comments Off on The Eleventh Gay of Christmas
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Yes, I know. You’ve been relying on my Twelve Gays of Christmas posts to teach you the true and historical meaning of Christmas, but today is Christmas Eve and it’s time for me to hit the shopping mall. Doing your Christmas shopping at the last minute is a guy thing, and the malls and stores are packed with men. Culling one from the herd is a breeze. It’s like taking candy from a straight baby.
My tradition is to head out early, buy the gifts I need to get, and then spend the day picking out what I really want for Christmas. I think I’m gonna go for a Latino this year.
So no Christmas history lesson with today’s post, sorry to ruin your holiday. Instead I’ll offer you this sage bit of advice regarding what you may get for Christmas:
Happy Holidays!
Related Posts You Might Enjoy:
24 Saturday Dec 2011
Posted It's A Gay World
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Twas the night before Christmas, when all down the soi,
Sex tourists were creeping, in search of a boy.
Neon lights were all strung – god only knows how,
While barkers yelled loudly their call of, “Show Now!”
The boys were all listless, but strutting their stuff,
Each a vision of youth, lined up in the buff.
Mamasan was in drag, the captain in a tux,
The boys were all wistful of making some bucks.
When out on the soi arose such a clatter,
The bar emptied out to see what was the matter.
The barkers were shouting, the soi all astir,
While at Maxi’s and Dick’s they all downed more liqueur.
The moon over Bangkok, red lights all aglow,
Brewed a promise of sex in the scene down below.
When, what to their wondering eyes should appear,
But a rare sight these days: a live customer!
Avoiding the touts, he made quite a mad dash,
And they knew right away it just might mean some cash.
Mamasan got busy, big profits her aim,
She shrilled out her orders, calling each boy by name.
“Hey Somwang! You Sompong! Little Lek boy, Aek too!
Now Tui, Wit and Mongon! Come On! All of you!
Get up on the stage now! Get out of your clothes!
Hurry up and look lively! Get into your rows!”
The music began as the lights went to dim,
The boys eyed the doorway; an old man stepped in.
With an insincere wai, then an order of beer,
The boys began dancing now that payday was here.
With candle wax dripping, hard cocks to enjoy,
Mamasan saw dollars, and asked, “You want boy?”
The old man was drooling, abandoned to fate,
“Too many to choose from, but I’ll try number eight.”
“Where you from? Where you stay?” the cute bar boy cried.
“ I tink I love you,” the cute bar boy then lied.
The old man was smitten in a blink of the eye,
“How much will this cost me?” “Up to you,” the reply.
The show wasn’t over, live sex acts still on tap,
“Tip Me!” screeched the boy fucking on the falang’s lap.
“Everyting,” was the promise of what he could do,
So the check bin was tallied, the off fee paid too.
They strolled down the sidewalk: a straight boy, an old queer,
It wasn’t a long walk, the hotel was quite near.
Suriwongse has rooms, for rent by the hour,
A quick dash upstairs, then into the shower.
With lights turned down low – this bar boy was sure modest!
It took near forever, to get him undressed.
The blue pill kicked in, the falang started to stroke,
Then pointed at his cock, and gently asked, “Sa-moke?”
The boy spoke not a word, but went straight to his work,
He blew, then he sucked, and finished off with a jerk.
Cleaning up with a tissue from head down to toes,
And giving a nod, off the bed he then rose.
His smile was heart melting, a quick kiss, just some lip,
With a sweet gracious wai he accepted his tip.
“Melly Clitmas to you,” he said at the door,
“I tink I take taxi, please 500 baht more?”
Wishing You, Yours – and the guy you paid to spend the night with –
A Very Warm and Merry Christmas!
24 Saturday Dec 2011
Posted End of the Week, It's A Gay World
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A nice seasonal end this week, and the flipside to the Eleventh Gay of Christmas to boot. I thought the Republican clown car would behave and try not to make asses out of themselves during Christmas week, and for the most part they did. But Mama Crazy, in dire need of some ratings, took the opportunity afforded by the holiday to criticize President Obama yet again. This time it was for the White House Christmas card.
The front of the card shows the Obamas’ dog, Bo, sitting in a very Christmas-like setting, with a fireplace decorated with wreaths and red ribbons, and a table with a poinsettia plant and presents. “From our family to yours, may your holidays shine with the light of the season,” reads the inside of the card, which is signed by the Obamas (including Bo).
Palin feels the card is un-American. “It’s odd,” she said, wondering why the president’s Christmas card highlights his dog instead of traditions like ‘family, faith and freedom.’” Or at least a freshly killed moose. Palin made no mention of the fact that the Obama family’s dog is black.
With regard to the card, she added, “It’s just a different way of thinking coming out of the White House.”
But Palin’s comments were not all negative. She hinted that there may still be a chance that after the next election there will be no thinking coming out of the White House. After previously saying she would not run for the 2012 GOP nomination for president, she said, “It’s not too late for folks to jump in. Who knows what will happen in the future.”
The Newt, who is still the temporary leader of the pack, responded to Palin’s announcement by reminding the country what Christmas is really all about. “Jesus Fucking Christ!” he was heard to mutter.
23 Friday Dec 2011
Posted It's A Gay World, The 12 Gays of Xmas
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“No Virginia, there is no Santa Claus, you greedy little bitch. Now get your ass back in the kitchen and help your mother do the dishes.”
Okay, so not quite the warmth of the popular lie that became a holiday tradition after Francis P Church wrote his famous reply as an editorial in New York’s Sun back in 1897. But those were simpler times. Readers were thrilled with the editorial and repeatedly asked the paper to reprint it each year, which it did sporadically until the 1920s, when it was finally an annual feature until the paper folded in 1950. The lesson here is not that the world needs Santa, but rather that liars never prosper. Whether or not to admit to the little ones that Santa is but a joke, and at what age you should break the bad news, is a debate that has been going on for over a century, if not longer.
Oh, damn, Was I suppose to post a spoiler alert first? Never mind, the Easter Bunny will be exceptionally generous to you next year.
It seems every year someone gets called Scrooge or a Grinch for telling kids the truth. This year it was a second grade teacher in New York who, during a geography lesson about the North Pole, told her class of 7 and 8 year-olds there is no Santa. The community, and then the country, was outraged. Except for those who live in Chicago where a news anchor on the local FOX affiliate at the end of a segment about children’s unreasonable gift expectations announced there is no Santa on air. FOX celebrated the season by chastising the news anchor for telling the truth, something FOX tries to avoid at all costs.
Those two events prompted this post, which originally was going to jump on the bandwagon and call for the bastards’ heads. Until I started reading the responses, editorials, and comments posted on the web. There are a lot of people in the world who should just never be allowed to breed. Even when I first heard about the incident in New York I kinda thought, well, by the age of eight that’s really no big deal. By then kids should already know that Santa is a fake. But over and over again I read the comments of outraged parents whose kids were in the fourth grade, nine years-old, twelve years-old . . . and they all still believed in Santa.
Child psychologists refuse to be pinned down to an age, but all agree when your kid starts asking if Santa is real, it’s time to fess up and tell the truth. That makes sense. But if you have a twelve year-old who still believes in Santa, you’ve got a real problem on your hands. And the kid has a dipstick for a parent. Sure he will grow up to be a fan of Bill O’Reilly, but the kid has already been marked as a loser by his classmates, and that’s an opinion that will stay with him his entire life. The myth of Santa is nice. Allowing your child who is old enough to have started growing hair to believe in fairy tales is not.
At least in the Christian world, whether you are a practicing one or not, how and when you found out Santa was a big lie is a memory we all share. If you were one of the slow kids, you probably found out when all of your classmates laughed at you when you started talking about Santa’s upcoming visit. If you were one of the advanced kids, you got to share you new found knowledge with all the other kiddies and ruin their holiday too. Older siblings are notorious for spreading the bad news. And cheapskate parents tired of having to fork out for extra presents from ‘Santa’ do their part in bringing truth to the children of the world too.
My folks never had the Santa talk with me. They never had the sex talk either. But then considering even before I learned Santa was a hoax I’d already discovered the joys of playing doctor with the cute little blonde boy next door, neither discussion would probably have been comfortable for them. I didn’t find out about the big Xmas lie from either of my brothers either. I have two who were born in the same year as I was – for three months we are all the same age each year – so we all tended to discover life’s truths about the same time. But I beat them to the Santa thing. I probably also beat them to the joys of the kid next door thing too.
Parents think they are more sly than they really are. And also think their kids are dumber than they really are. As Christmas time neared each year, mine would place the garage off limits. No problemo, it’s not like the garage held anything of interest anyway. But tell a kid he can’t do something and that quickly becomes a beacon that just will not fade. At the age of five I snuck into the garage for no better reason than I was not suppose to be there.
With three boys to provide Christmas memories to, and a generous set of parents, there was a huge shelf stuffed full of toys. Sweet! Possibly proving that I really was as dumb as my parents thought I was, I failed to make the connection between the stash of toys and the upcoming holiday. Logic never stood a chance regardless of my IQ, ‘cuz among all the worthless crap filling the shelves was a real cool yellow Cocoa Cola delivery truck. The back of the truck was open and filled with tiny little wood trays, each filled with little coke bottles, just like the real delivery trucks. What? Just ‘cuz I’m gay you thought I had my young heart set on an Easy-Bake Oven?
Christmas Eve rolled around (bless my folks they allowed us to open our presents the night before Christmas) and things would have been cool if that damn truck, now wrapped in colorful paper, had a tag that said “From Dad & Mom,” But nope, instead it was “From Santa.”
Busted.
I kept mum and didn’t tell my brothers, preferring to quietly laugh at their foolishness for another year. Besides, the damn truck was killer so who cared where it came from. Better yet, it gave me a new game to play with my next door neighbor. Huh. I think I just figured out where the plot line and dialogue comes from in porn.
Another year passed, my folks played their Santa trick again, my brothers continued to believe, and I couldn’t tell you what I got for Christmas that year. But I can tell you I moved on from the blonde kid to the little Italian boy who lived on the opposite side of our house. He wasn’t quite as willing as the blonde to drop trou, and I learned another universal truth. I also learned I much preferred a challenge, and dark dusky skin to lily white shades. That was a lesson of far greater importance than learning Santa was a myth.
Eventually my brothers figured out the truth about Santa too. And my parents quit making references to the big fat guy in red and quit forging his signature to gifts, though no one ever said anything about it. I returned the favor when I decided I was gay by never having ‘the talk’ with them, and as with the truth about Santa, we all just ignore that the myth that I’m a straight man is as big of a falsehood.
Many years later at Christmas, my kid brother, who knows me far too well, asked me to not tell his six year-old son that there was no Santa Claus. He asked nicely so I went along with his wishes. I told my nephew Santa was gay instead.
23 Friday Dec 2011
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Traditions are a big part of the holiday season. We all have them, those little observances that we participate in each year, many of which bring fond memories of Christmases past. For some it’s all about the tree. Where it’s placed, the ornaments hung, what gets the top spot and when and who gets to place that one. For others it’s songs, the carols we all learned as children and continue to sing as adults, getting just as many of the words wrong as we did as a child.
Movies are a popular holiday tradition; Jimmy Stewart is part of many people’s Christmas every year. As times go by, I’m sure the old black and white holiday favorites are losing their appeal and being replaced by more contemporary tales. I don’t know which newer holiday movies are becoming the standard for Xmas observations these days, but I pull out The Long Goodbye every year for my holiday movie viewing tradition. It’s a great Xmas movie, it has everything: Santa, snow, Xmas carols, car chases, explosions, dead bodies . . . and Gina Davis makes one of the baddest ass heroes Hollywood has ever seen. Tom Cruise would be so lucky. But then Gina’s balls are twice the size of Tom’s anyway.
It seemed appropriate for my blog to have a holiday traditional post, but I blew my wad back in July. No problemo. A bit of updating to remove the Xmas in July references, and I’m re-posting a Noom story today. I hope you enjoyed it before and will enjoy it again. And will enjoy it as much next year when I post it for the third time. (But for those of you who only drool over the pictures of hot guys anyway, I’m updating and adding new pix too. So enjoy.)
One of the gay genes I missed out on was the shopping thing. I don’t care for show tunes either. So it’s a happy trade off. Wandering aimlessly through a mall is just not my idea of a good time. If there is something I need, I make a direct beeline for the most appropriate store, buy whatever it is I’m after, and get the hell out of Dodge. If I find a pair of pants or a shirt I like that fits well, I tend to buy a dozen or so in assorted colors. That avoids the need for future shopping excursions.
But the Xmas holiday shopping season is a bit different. I like the hustle and bustle of the crowds that time of the year. The air is crisp and everyone is rushing about to find the perfect present for their loved ones. It’s the perfect time for me to perfect my skills at the Asian cultural technique of sidewalk stopping. You know, where you come to an abrupt halt and just stand there blocking the sidewalk for no apparent reason. It’s most effective just inside a doorway or at the foot of an escalator. Knowing most Americans never make it to Asia and miss out on this experience, at Xmas time I give them a demonstration. My little holiday gift to my countrymen. When the grumbling turns to cussing or to cries of anguish, I move off on my annual shopping spree. I find the gifts I need, stock up on supplies, and discover the latest consumer trends. The stuff everyone else knew about in March.
During the rest of the year when I’m forced into a store I invariably find small items that I know Noom, my bar boy friend and current love of my life, would enjoy. Small stuff, $5 to $20 items. And I always end up buying them. Each trip I make to Thailand I have a handful of small gifts for him. Passing them on has become routine. I pile them up on the table of my hotel room and on our first night together he makes a quick perusal of his gifts, nods a few times, and then we get down to the important stuff: sex.
Thais don’t get all gooey about gift getting. The other side of the coin, gift giving, is a foreign idea to them. When you give a gift to a Thai, unless they are familiar with western custom, they rarely say thanks and prefer unwrapping their present later in private. It’s that face thing. If your gift sucks, they don’t have to act like they are thrilled with it. So it’s more about your face than theirs.
When I hop into the shower, Noom takes more time to go through the stuff I’ve brought. He makes no comment, but clothing that’s a hit gets carefully hung, ready for wear the next day. If I picked out a dud, I’ll know: it gets a new spot at the bottom of the pile.
The first time I met Noom, after spending a few days together, on my last night in town he hauled me through the streets of Patpong on the hunt for a specific vendor. If he’d told me what he was looking for I could have led him to the right stall. But instead we missed that one and he settled for second best. We ended up at a booth selling incense, gift boxed with a few other smelly items. He bought two. One for me, one for my mom. An incredibly sweet gesture. And the first gift giving occasion in our relationship. So it’s his fault. He started it.
Since then, I always have given Noom a Christmas present. And a birthday present too – his ‘Thai’ birthday is December 4th. So he gets a two-fer when I get into town. Thais don’t really get the Xmas thing. Especially since it is so close to New Years. New Years they understand; they celebrate several each year. And the Chinese version involves gift getting, so you can understand their confusion when we pack the familiar, New Years, in with the unfamiliar, Xmas, all within the same week. Noom goes with what is more familiar to him and always has a New Year card for me. He spends time picking one out each year, and carefully signs it: Love Noom. That’s the only time of the year either of us uses the L word to each other. A great way to start the new year. Even if it is at Christmas.
So Xmas was coming and I’d decided even though my annual year end trip means I don’t get into Bangkok until a few days after the event, I wanted to give Noom a Xmas stocking. I like doing Xmas stockings. Adults rarely get them. A tradition for me in the past, friends, family, roommates, and lovers have always enjoyed getting a stocking filled with goodies on Christmas morning. It brings the child out in them. So then later, they are easy to abuse.
If the Xmas thing is a foreign idea to Thais, the whole stocking part of the holiday is even more iffy. Just when they kinda got a grasp on the dead guy on a cross birthday thing, you throw in the big fat guy in red. No wonder they are confused about our traditions. And think we are strange. So a few months in advance, I started prepping Noom for the idea of a Xmas stocking. I asked him if he knew about the tradition. Of course he nodded in the affirmative; a Thai will never admit they don’t know something. But I’ve become adept at reading his nods. This was the ‘yes, I don’t know’ nod. So I spelled it out for him. He kept nodding – the ‘I understand what you are saying, but you don’t make a lot of sense’ nod – as I told him about Santa, his sleigh and reindeer, shimmying down the chimney, good stocking/bad stocking, nice gifts or coal. He patiently listened to my story, undoubtedly thinking I’d had a bit too much to drink. A fat farang sneaking into your house in the middle of the night to fill your socks with stuff . . . I got the ‘I love you but farangs are very weird’ nod.
Come Xmas that year, on our first night together Noom’s pile of goodies was a bit slimmer than usual; I’d hoarded the good stuff for his stocking. Before we slipped into bed for sleep – that’d be our second slipping into bed of the evening – I got out the empty Xmas stocking I’d brought. It had his name on it in gold glitter. He was curious, a bit confused, slightly remembered my telling him about the tradition, but liked seeing his name. Especially since it was in shiny gold caps. I explained the Santa thing to him again, and made him hang the stocking up. Noom has a thing about positioning. So he had to try a few spots out before settling on using a cupboard knob above the microwave oven. Not quite a chimney, but it was in the ballpark.
The next morning. I snuck out of bed early and filled his stocking with all the stuff I’d brought. Lots of chocolates and holiday candy, a pair of sexy underwear, candles, hand lotions, and bath stuff cuz he likes smelly things, and useful but boring things like socks and batteries. And toys. Lots of toys. My version of a Xmas stocking is that you start with the biggest stocking you can find, and then cram it full of goodies. Overflow hangs precariously from the top and if necessary you can pile up more stuff below. Crass commercialism is what the Christmas holiday is all about.
Mission accomplished, and vowing to start a diet before the new year in fear that I was starting to look a bit too much like the guy in red, I quietly slipped back into bed. An hour or two later we officially woke up. Noom rolled over, pulling the sheet down to display what Santa had brought me. This is an act Noom performs regularly, stretching out and then laying there naked with his hard member exposed, the perfect start to any day. Of course his stiffy is not because he is glad to see me, but rather that he’s in need of a piss. So on this non-Christmas Christmas morning, he got up to stumble into the bathroom as usual, and then made quick work of his business having eyed his stocking brimming with gifts.
My gift was the huge smile on his face as he returned to bed, naked, hugging the stocking to his chest. It’s a clear, crisp mental picture that makes me smile every time I summons it. Which is often. That morning, I played dumb, “Oh? Santa was here?”
Not fooled, he emphatically replied, “Noooo. You.”
I could have worked on the Santa angle a bit longer, but the sight of him as he hopped onto the bed, naked, legs crossed with the stocking resting in between left me dumb struck. Hard. And a bit giddy. I no longer have any other memory of Christmas mornings past.
He began pulling each item out of his stocking, making a careful inspection and then assigning it to one of a number of piles he’d started across the bed. (That positioning thing of his again). What was not easily recognizable he’d hold out to me for an explanation. The chocolates, wrapped in colorful foil in Xmas and winter shapes, he’d identify before setting into the candy pile. That he knew ‘snowman’ surprised me. That I had to tell him ‘penguin’ did not, but then an arctic bird is a bit of a stretch even for Christmas. The smelly stuff got carefully sniffed, placed in their pile, and then often pulled back and sniffed again. After the third scented personal grooming item, the ‘smelly’ pile got subdivided: ‘loom’ smelly stuff in one, grooming scents in another. The gifts still in the stocking had to wait until the division was made.
He had to stop, get off the bed, and run one of the toy cars across the floor; the socks and batteries got the same degree of disinterest as they would’ve when I was a child. And I thanked the gods the underwear got placed into their proper pile instead of being tried on. I’d included several small items with an Om on them, a symbol Noom is particularly taken with. Those required careful alignment on the desk across the room. Watching his gorgeous ass make that trip each time reminding me to make sure I had more Om items in years to come. I’m not sure which of us enjoyed his stocking more. But the hit, his favorite, was a shaggy, blue stuffed animal, which he properly named, “Dawg” before crushing it to his chest. It was love at first sight.
On that trip we went to Chiang Mai for a few days and Phuket for a week. He packed his dawg in his suitcase and it made the trip with us. Nightly, he’d lay it on his chest, cradling it under his chin as he drifted off to sleep, a smile infused with love on his face. Nightly, my heart would sigh at the cute sight of Noom and his dawg curled up together in bed, Noom naked, the dawg in its red Santa hat.
The next year, a few months before my year end trip, I asked Noom if he still had his stocking. I got an ‘yes, how fucking stupid do you think I am’ nod in reply, and then it slipped my mind. I brought a new one with me in December, just in case. But on our first night together he unpacked his original stocking, carefully unwrapping it from the tissue paper he’d stored it in. Noom is big on tradition. So I was a bit surprised that night when instead of the annual New Year card, I got a birthday card instead (mine’s at the end of December). A different holiday, a different celebration, a different card, but the same carefully inscribed, ‘Love Noom.’
A different hotel this time too, and another difficult decision in finding the perfect place to hang his stocking. When he woke the next morning, he pulled back the sheet, showing himself off as usual. But I noticed his eyes immediately went to where his stocking hung, once again overflowing with small gifts that’d bring me a huge amount of enjoyment. He was in no hurry, content to lay there next to me. But his eyes kept circling back. Thinking that maybe he needed an invitation, I nodded in the stocking’s direction. Instead of scurrying over to where it hung, mimicking my nod toward the stocking he said, “No. You.”
Fetch? WTF? I looked at him, a bit higher up than I’d normally be staring at this time of our morning together. But then thought, what the hell. Delivering the stocking wasn’t going to be nearly as much fun as watching him retrieve it in the nude, but I needed to pee anyway. So I slipped out of bed , a twofold purpose to my trip. Finished with the more important task, I went to grab his stocking and came to an abrupt stop. Hanging next to it was a small stocking, baby-sized, with my name carefully glittered in gold. All four S’s, his preferred spelling. And from the other side of the room I heard, a bit smug and a lot satisfied, “Oh? Santa here?”
My stocking had two cards in it, carefully rolled to fit. A New Year card and a Christmas card. Both signed, Love Noom. There was a small, framed picture of the two of us together taken the year before in Chiang Mai. And a ring. Made of ivory (don’t go there).
I could have cried. I should have cried. But Noom came running, gave me a quick kiss, made an attempt at saying Merry Christmas, and grabbing his stocking headed back to bed, the sight of that gorgeous ass quickly bringing me back to my normal emotional state. In lust.
I don’t wear jewelry, especially not rings. But I slipped his gift on my finger, or tried to find one it’d fit. Noom pulled it off, thumped my chest and proclaimed, “Good design.” I make jewelry for a living, necklaces and amulets of stone using silver I buy in Thailand. His ‘good design’ was him telling me that that was the purpose of the ring. My next trip, as soon as he saw me he checked to see if I was wearing it and what design I’d come up with. It met with his approval, and I got a ‘Good Job, Yup, that’s what I had in mind’ nod.
Traditions are a major part of our Christmas holiday celebrations, and I now have a new one. And so does Noom. There are a lot of cherished memories from Christmases of my youth, many more of Christmases I’ve spent with the family I’ve made of friends and lovers. But few of them measure up to the warm fuzzies I get remembering the holidays I’ve spent with Noom. Finally, Santa brought me what I really wanted for Christmas.
22 Thursday Dec 2011
Posted It's A Gay World, The 12 Gays of Xmas
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The history of fruitcake can be traced back to ancient Egypt where fruitcake was placed in the tombs of Pharaohs. It’s quite possible some of that fruitcake is still in existence today. The oldest known fruitcake clocked in at 125 years-old and was eaten by Jay Leno in 2003. Jay’s a conservatives’ comedian, and not really funny. I prefer the comedic styling of Tosh O, who if presented with a fruitcake made in 1878 would have the good sense to make someone else eat it. After it’d been floating in a toilet for a few hours.
Many credit Tonight Show host Johnny Carson for establishing the fruitcake-related comedy genre as he joked, “The worst gift is fruitcake. There is only one fruitcake in the entire world, and people keep sending it to each other.” But ridiculing the often maligned Christmas desert can be traced back to Charles Dickens who described the dense, surgery treat as a “geological homemade cake.”
Regardless of who really started the whole anti-fruitcake craze, the one thing everyone can agree on is that there is nothing funny about receiving one. Unwrapping a holiday present to find a fruitcake inside is truly a case of being Ebenezer screwed.
Fruitcakes were a popular treat in ancient Rome and at that time were mostly a mix of raisins, nuts, and pomegranates. During the Middle Ages, honey, spices and preserved fruits were added to the mix. Every country had their own version, but it wasn’t until the 16th century, and thanks to cheap abundant quantities of sugar from America, that the current version that relies on excessive amounts of candied fruit became the norm.
Fruitcake usually contains candied fruit, citron (made from the thick peel of the citrus fruit of the same name), dried fruit, fruit rind, nuts, spices and some sort of liquor or brandy. The ratio of fruit and nuts to batter is fairly high, with just enough cake batter to hold it all together. This results in a very dense, heavy cake. For most people, fruitcake conjures up an image of a comestible that is as heavy as lead, easier to cut with a welding torch than a knife, and is almost always associated with the holiday season, though no one knows why it became a Christmas treat. Most however, blame the English.
In Victorian times, around the end of the 18th century, there were laws in England restricting the use of plum cake (plum being the generic word for dried fruit at the time) to Christmas, Easter, weddings, christenings and funerals. Rumor has it that Queen Victoria once waited a year to devour a birthday fruitcake because she felt it showed restraint. An American tale of the Revolutionary War has it that George Washington asked Benjamin Franklin to come up with an easy to use barricade material to guard against incoming British cannon fire. Rather than telling him to go fly a kite, Ben suggested using his mother-in-law’s fruitloaf. Her attempt at some kind of bread had been so hard that his uncle had broken a tooth while biting into it at the previous year’s holiday dinner.
The vision of fruitcakes is a part of the worldwide collective consciousness, though there is no record of anyone having ever actually eaten one. The best use for fruitcake seems to be an idea that gained prominence in Manitou Springs, Colorado in 1995. Since that year, the town holds an annual Great Fruitcake Toss on the first Saturday of every January. “We encourage the use of recycled fruitcakes,” says Leslie Lewis of the Manitou Springs Chamber of Commerce. The all-time Great Fruitcake Toss record is 1,420 feet, set in January 2007 by a group of eight Boeing engineers who built the ‘Omega 380,’ a mock artillery piece fueled by compressed air pumped by an exercise bike. If you don’t own a fruitcake, you can rent one at the event for 25 cents.
Despite its less than stellar reputation, fruitcake as part of the Christmas holiday tradition, not unlike a case of genital herpes, is here to stay. Even the federal government has recognized its importance and has set aside December 27 as National Fruitcake Day. I believe that is the day that America’s landfills get a fresh layer thanks to all of the fruitcakes received as holiday gifts being thrown out.
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22 Thursday Dec 2011
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Yeah, I know. It’s like Christmas came early this year. I’ve just recently posted an Ubiquitous Plastic Stool Shot, and already here is another to feast your eyes on. I can feel your excitement. But this one is a Bonus Shot, an addendum post to a post about Wat Sadoe Muang. So it really doesn’t count.
I’d forgotten about this photo until I ran across it while pulling up pictures of Wat Sadoe Muang in Chiang Mai. I think perhaps the gods favored me with this nicely arranged tableau for taking the time to bother with visiting the tiny wat that for the most part, history has forgotten. I’m sure by posting this photo I’ll rectify that; hordes of touri will no doubt be now streaming to Wat Sadoe Muang with visions of a fine example of an Ubiquitous Plastic Stool in their heads.