How did fruitcake come to be so reviled? Mention fruitcake to five people and four of them are sure to have something unkind to say about it, usually in the form of a cliché including the word ‘doorstop’ and the certainty that there is really only one single fruitcake in the world, endlessly regifted. Hahaha.
There is some funny fruitcake hate, for sure. Like this inflatable fruitcake, or this Edward Gorey illustration, or try Googling ‘fruitcake disposal’. But still. Most people can't really tell you why they hate fruitcake (and some may even confess that they've never actually tried it). Pressed, they are likely to finger the gross candied fruit and the hard, stale cake. I guess if that had been my experience of fruitcake, I'd probably hate it, too.