RIVER CITY JOURNAL: THIS IS IT: YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SAVE A DYING TRADITION

The fruitcake, like spotted owls and manatees, deserves to be saved from oblivion. You can do it, if you're really brave.

It is my duty and obligation, in these few days that remain before Christmas, to speak up once again for the most maligned of all holiday goodies: the noble and exalted fruitcake.

Yes, most of you thought you might make it through an entire holiday season without receiving, seeing, tasting or reading about fruitcakes. After all, thanks to a stern upbringing and a strong support system from your peers, you have learned, like so many others, to hate fruitcake.

It is socially acceptable to hate fruitcake. In fact, the quickest way to become a wallflower at any holiday party is to ask your host or hostess, "Where's the fruitcake?"

These days, instead of fruitcake you are more likely to be offered a tray laden with chunks of liver -- which you hated even when your mother cooked it -- wrapped in nearly raw bacon and skewered on a toothpick with an unidentifiable crunchy vegetable. And you're supposed to ooh and aah and make sounds of utter contentment as you chew and swallow.

Give me a break.

No, give me a hearty slice of fruitcake. Please.

It is politically correct to abhor fruitcake and to state your feelings publicly, loudly and freely. Fruitcake bashing is so correct that even the occasional free thinker who actually enjoys a slice or two now and then can be heard to say, usually in too forceful a voice, that fruitcake is the bane of the culinary world and should be stricken from the recipe books.

Tit for tat: If we fruitcake connoisseurs have to worry about censorship, shouldn't we have the right to ban things we don't like in cookbooks? Like anything that must be cooked at "a slow boil" or "until it starts to crackle."

When I speak of fruitcake, I am talking, of course, about good fruitcake. Even we few remaining defenders of the fruitcake faith realize there are bad fruitcakes here and there. Just as there are some apple-pie flops now and then. Or even the occasional chocolate chip-cookie disaster. But do you hear us running around shouting from the rooftops about the plague of apple pastry and Tollhouse morsels? Absolutely not. Apple pie and chocolate chip cookies are in favor right now.

Besides, those of us who like fruitcake have better manners.

There are some really good commercially made fruitcakes on the market, but the suppliers are dwindling because of all the negative attention that has, over the years, been heaped on them. But the best fruitcakes are homemade, because each and every one of them has a secret ingredient. There are still a few -- far too few, in my opinion -- cooks brave enough to make fruitcakes for the holidays, and each of them is happy to share a recipe minus a pinch of that or a drop of this. When you are the last of a dying breed, it behooves you to protect your franchise.

Sadly, all of this bad-mouthing of fruitcakes -- which, by the way, have never said anything bad about anyone or anything else -- has had some nasty results. Fruitcake cooks have been driven underground, forced to produce their best efforts in secrecy.

And (kind readers, we are now getting to the heart of the matter) fruitcake bakers are no longer giving their wares to deserving recipients, like, oh, say a kindly newspaper editor.

OK. I'm shameless.

But what's a fellow to do when his mouth is all set for big bite of moist, chewy, walnut-and-fruit-filled bit of luscious fruitcake?

I can hear some of you saying: Well, Mr. Editor, if you want fruitcake, why don't you bake it yourself?

I have an answer: I think I can bribe some of you to bake fruitcakes for me. If you bring me some of your fruitcake and I like it, I'll praise you to high heaven in a future column. I might even print your photograph.

Hint: If you bring an entire fruitcake and it's good, you are more likely to win this particular sweepstakes. Unlike Publishers Clearinghouse, I don't rely on random drawings. I prefer to pick my fruitcake winners the old-fashioned way. One bite at a time.

Well, it's up to you now. You know what you have to do. Only fruitcakes received before noon on Christmas Eve will be eligible for the Look! You're Name Is in the Editor's Column grand prize. Don't delay.

Please feel free to enter as often as you like. Employees and relatives of employees also are eligible to win.

As for the rest of you, the ones who will continue to upbraid fruitcakes every opportunity you get, I hope you can have a merry Christmas in spite of your Bah! Humbug! attitude.

~R. Joe Sullivan is the editor of the Southeast Missourian.