The Fruitcake Mystery

  
     

 

             
 

Every year thousands of Fruitcakes are bought, exchanged, and then, two days after the holidays, thousands of fruitcakes are disposed of. Why are so many people compelled to give a gift that no one wants? Researches Ohio State are working on the problem.
"We don't have all the facts, yet, but we have some working theories." says one researcher, Dr. Knutter, "It seems that fruitcakes are living organism which receive some sort of pollination by changing environments. That's where we're at now, but there's lots of questions to be answered."
The main problem confronting the scientist now is the mechanism by which a fruitcake causes its host to participate in the pollination process. "Somehow it influences people to buy it. It may be that that a fruitcake still in the store is somehow appealing. Once it leaves, however, some change must occur which makes it unappetizing. This is obviously a survival tactic which prevents it from being eaten before it can reproduce." Dr. Knutter tells us, "Some experiments we'd like to do involve sending researchers into the stores to sample the fruitcakes before buying them to see if they are actually palatable in their presold state."
"The only part of the process we have a handle on is the actual pollination. It's obvious that fruitcakes have plenty of opportunities to exchange spores as they change hands at Christmas parties or cross in the mail.And the back shelves of pantries are the perfect place for the impregnated fruitcake to stay while the process reaches the next stage, and it's at this next stage that we lose track of the life cycle."
Dr. Knutter says that the largest fruitcake mystery is far from solved. A pollinated fruitcake's progeny, or children, will end up back in stores the following Christmas, and there's still no proven explanation for this.
"We still have a lot of work to do there, and we have some theories, but they're somewhat far-fetched."


       So we're working on problem folks. Bear with us till we find a fruitcake cure. And in spite of the efforts of researchers this cure may not be soon forthcoming. A coworker of Dr. Knutter's who wished to remain nameless said that the research is running into a few legal snags.
"Once we identified fruitcakes as living organisms, all sorts of testing regulations became pertinent. Most of these would normally mean a little extra paperwork on our part, not a big deal really, but when some of our findings became public the activists became involved."
"There are currently 20 organizations nationwide, three of which are strongly represented on our own campus, all dedicated to protecting the rights of the fruitcakes."
We asked our source how these groups hamper research. "Well, for example, one night our lab was raided and all of fruitcakes were Ôliberated' into the river. Some of them floated all the way to the Ohio River and on to Cincinnati where a lab working on the same problem found them and wrote a paper on fruitcakes using waterways as transportation. This created a big stir until we realized that they had simply found our lost samples. The paper had to be retracted and months of research was invalidated. We did learn one useful thing though: not even the fish will eat those things."
There is now legislation being pushed through which will protect fruitcakes in their natural environment, so before you clean out the pantry, you might want to check with local officials to see how fruitcakes can be legally disposed of. Eventually it is hoped that a solution will be found that is agreeable to activists and scientists alike. Until then just remember that every time you pass on or recieve one of these holiday "foods," you're participating in the miracle of life. And who knows, maybe someday we'll be sitting our children down to explain to them all about the birds, the bees, and the fruitcakes.		  
             


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