The Mystery of the Fruitcake is Explained!

For over a century civilians and public servants alike have pondered the mystery of the fruitcake.  What exactly is it?  Where does it come from?  And most puzzling, why does it come at all?

Now, for the first time, the great mystery of fruitcakes is explained – at least partially.  The tale of these annoying and perplexing gifts given at Christmastime can finally be told.  Questions have swirled for generations.  Where do these fruitcakes come from?  What happens to them?  Does anyone actually eat them?  Read on for an incredible story of sleuthing, archival research, and frightening revelations. The long-hidden, much discussed, and somewhat disturbing enigma of fruitcakes is revealed!

Our story goes back to the late 19^th century.  In 1881 two intrepid explorers in northern Quebec stumbled upon an outcrop of strange circular and rectangular objects.  They looked like loaves of bread infused with various objects that resembled bits and pieces of fruit and nuts.  Recognizing the the objects’ potential as Christmas gifts, the explorers staked a mining claim and began supplying fruitcakes to the Christmas market.  That’s right – all of the fruitcakes in the world come from a mine in northern Quebec.  Though the “red scare” closed the mine in 1953, fruitcakes continued to enter the market from accumulated stockpiles until 1979. At this point refugees from Three Mile Island bought out the remaining inventory.  Incidentally the “red scare” was actually the fright experienced by small children when they saw the bright red fruit-like objects in the fruitcakes.  Congressional hearings were needed to get this sorted out.  While there was considerable stress and anxiety on those testifying, they worked through it for the sake of the country…the world even.

For many years it was generally believed that nobody actually ate any of these fruitcakes.  Rather, they just continued to ricochet throughout the western world as they were given and re-gifted year after year.  However, painstaking research by a petroleum engineer in Odessa, Texas has revealed that there has actually been a slow bleed-off in the supply of fruitcakes.  It turns out that a lady in northern Colorado would indeed eat the fruitcake she got for Christmas each year.  She typically finished consuming the fruitcake by mid-June of the following year.

Since 1953 no new source of fruitcakes has since been discovered anywhere in the world. This means supply has been monotonically decreasing as one is eaten each year.  Think of bitcoin, only in reverse.  There was a brief moment of optimism (and anxiety), when it seemed that new supply had been discovered in Antarctica.  This caused the price of fruitcakes to crash but further review and testing determined it was a false alarm.  Explorers identified The Antarctica deposits as frozen Hostess Twinkies, not fruitcakes.

However, have no fear!  Within the BBB (build better bread) program recently passed by congress, DOE funds research to develop a type of cyanobacteria. This new wonder will digest plastic waste and turn it into synthetic fruitcakes using only energy from the sun.  We can all look forward to the extraordinary public good that awaits us. It will also be the end of the unsolved mystery of the fruitcake.
  – Jeff Linroth