Love it or loathe it? Advice for fruitcake freedom or fanaticism

Fruitcake, love it or hate it. Or just wrap it back up and give it to someone else.

This Christmas season, Cold Stone Creamery started a campaign to "Declare Your Fruitcake Freedom!" (with the idea to eat more Cold Stone ice cream instead). Turn in a fruitcake to your local Cold Stone, and get a $5 discount on any medium 8-inch ice cream cake.

"Knowing that fruitcakes are commonly re-gifted, it's alarming to think that nearly 21 million are purchased each year in the U.S. alone. That's one fruitcake for each person in the state of New York," reads the company's press release.

The company is issuing Fruitcake Freedom certificates that say, "I also hereby promise not to give or re-gift fruitcake this holiday season no matter how desperate the situation."

Meanwhile, a new Web site, ilovefruitcake.com, was launched for fruitcake fanatics. The site has historical trivia, a Fruitcake Queen and a Friendly Fruitcake Expert. The Swiss Colony sponsors the site as a way to "raise fruitcake awareness and stamp out fruitcake abuse." The site tells us that Egyptians used to bury fruitcake with their mummies as an essential afterlife food.

And Claud Mann, the chef of the TBS series "Dinner and a Movie," is a Mann on a mission, you could say, to save fruitcake from ridicule. He's offering a free fruitcake spice packet to the first 5,000 people to visit www.templespice.com and register to bake a fruitcake. Participants must also send a photo of their proud family posing with the fruitcake. Says Mann, "It's time to think outside the bundt."

It's enough to make a person feel nuttier than a . . . well, you get the idea.

Just about all the European countries have some form of a sweet cake or bread studded with dried fruit and/or nuts. For instance, twelfth-night cake in England, Dundee cake or "black bun" in Scotland, panettone in Italy, stollen in Germany and Scandinavian raisin bread.

Fruitcake is historically associated with Christmas in Merry Olde England. In his book, "The Dessert Bible," Christopher Kimball notes that "Fruitcakes are primarily about storage . . . when made with liquor-soaked fruit and wrapped in cheesecloth soaked in more booze, fruitcakes can be stored in a cool place for years. This is not a comforting thought for a modern cook but would clearly appeal to folks who lived before the advent of refrigeration."

Fruitcake was very chic during the Victorian era (1837-1901). When Queen Victoria once received a fruitcake for her birthday, as legend has it, she put it aside for a whole year as a sign of restraint and good taste.