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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