In Britain the traditional "Christmas cake" is a sort of rich fruitcake with a marzipan layer on top, and then a very hard white sugar-icing (which is a lot more difficult to do than it looks). Using it as a description is apparently meant to refer to the whiteness-aspect - at least, that's what one friend (the victorious spaghetti-fork opponent mentioned above) said when I asked him that same question.

He told me he really liked that line because the whiteness it suggests captured the bright-hazy heat of summer. Fair enough, I thought; but that line really didn't (and still doesn't) work for me. It might - at a stretch - relate to wide open spaces perhaps, but Charing Cross Road is a commercial, traffic-laden street in central London's shopping district, so the analogy just doesn't connect. If anything, summer on those downtown city pavements feels muggy.

For me "Christmas cake" conjures up heavy-sweet food, winter, cold, red-&-green holiday ornaments - it's far too concrete an image to depict weather or atmosphere. The line itself still says nothing to me, but the rest of the song more than makes up for it. (And - of course - my friend's interpretation could be nowhere near what Al intended when he wrote it.)

Anybody else have a take on this lyric?