Nice to see this thread. I thought I was the only sane person still left on the planet. Translate - one who loves fruitcake. My mother's fruitcake, grandmother's pound cake, and my father's smoked ham serve as the standard by which all others are measured. Few live up to the ideal, but some are still quite adequate. Being a teetotaling Methodist and sworn enemy of demon rum, Mother would not contaminate her fruitcakes with spirits of any sort but I anticipated the cutting of the cake as much as the arrival of Santa Claus. For us, Christmas meant a round of visits to grandparents and every uncle and aunt's house in Virginia and North Carolina for a holiday feed. Every household in both my Mother and Father's clan put out a pretty mouthwatering fruitcake. No one put a poundcake on the table for company except for Grandmother Hancock. She was the acknowledged master of that art. I never knew that anyone else in the family even attempted poundcakes until Grandmother died, and by then I was in my twenties. Good to know there are some confessing fruitcake lovers among us still.