The best fruitcake joke that I've heard was that from comedian Jim Gaffigan. He describes it like this: fruit - good, cake - great, fruitcake - nasty crap.
Even though I loved fruitcake MANY years ago, I just had to laugh because it now has such a bad reputation.

I think that it was the awful store-bought versions that bought on the demise of the fruitcake as a holiday favorite. When my mother decided that she was no longer going to make her homemade cake and substituted something she ordered from someone as part of a fundraiser, I was done with eating fruitcake.

Every year I say that I am going to make some for gifts but then decide that I would be undone to go through the work only to discover that they were thrown away or allowed to go bad.

I agree with Regina that it was the store-bought versions that brought on the demise.

I used to make them all the time, but the last few falls have been difficult and I didn't get to making gift basket items until too late for fruitcake. It does, after all, have to sit and mellow/season/ripen? - whatever it does sitting in the brandy - for two months.

I can't imagine anyone getting a homemade one not eating it. (Can they possibly go bad after that much booze?)

I forego the so called "fruitcake fruit" and buy nice quality dried fruits for mine. I do use the candied cherries for decoration, however.

I have bought fruit cakes from Lexington Market that were quite good. There is also this monestary in Kentucky, Gethsamane (sp), that makes a great fruit cake.

Fruitcake has been a joke at least since the 1970s. I remember feeling very unappreciative when my in-laws gave us a fruitcake they had received from another family member. It wouldn't have been so bad if I hadn't already heard the family jokes about the unwanted annual fruitcake.

My father used to make them from his father's recipe from the UK in the 1920's. My sister and I have both tried to make it, but it's not the same.

I still have a piece of last year's cake, which I will eat soon in memory of my late father. He used to make it on the Sunday in November when the mass prayer begain with "Stir up our hearts, oh Lord", so we called it Stir-up Sunday.

My hubby and I love fruitcake, and usually get a little one at Giant 'cause it's loaded with fruit. I'd love to know where to find a REALLY good, moist fruitcake--it's too much work to make at home.