Is there only one fruit cake in the world - being regifted?

I think that’s the Fourth Law of Thermodynamics: Fruitcake is neither created nor destroyed.

… nor ever eaten. :-)

Actually, it depends on the fruitcake. There’s a style of English fruitcake that’s tasty, dense, sweet, and fruity, and if it’s made fresh, it’s very very good indeed.

If it’s packed with preservatives and dried, and put in a festive holiday tin, and passed around, it’s not very good at all.

And isn’t the word “regifted” an offense against Fowler and Strunk?

@cwilbur; I am delighted to learn that there is a delicious English version of the awful thing I used to get as a holiday gift. I could have used it as a doorstop.

Forgive the use of regift – it is not a verb (as neither are to journal or to suicide.) Any good writer would and should be offended.

I find that getting my fluther question short and clear – particularly w. an intergenerational audience – is a challenge. Cyberspeak is, apparently, a vernacular w. its memes and acronyms and bots and software language.

It’s not so much that there is a delicious English version of the awful doorstop—it’s that the doorstop is a failed attempt at making a long-lived version of the delicious English thing.

There’s also an Italian version fruitcake, which only shares a name with the English version—thin layers of dense cake, layers of fruit, and layers of whipped cream or whipped cheese. It would not last two days in a tin.

In ancient times there was a large bowl of fruitcake batter that, in the wrong hands, had the power to bring about the end of the world. A wise old wizard took the batter, made seven fruitcakes, and distributed them to the corners of the earth. The fruitcakes must keep moving, for if the seven cakes were to come together the world as we know it would come to an end. Thus, the reason for perpetual regifting.