Christmas cakey.

Upon hearing that I was about to turn 25 without a ring on my finger, my Uncle Jack called me a "Christmas cakey." I was confused, because that doesn't make any sense at all. Is that like a Christmas cake? And if so, is that like a Christmas pie? I don't really eat cake at Christmas.

"A Christmas cakey?"

"You know, because it gets passed around and no one wants it."

"Oooooh, a fruitcake!"

"A Christmas cakey is how they say it in Japan."

I thought about how weird the Japanese were, that they adopted this English term and then pronounced it wrong. Granted, we do this sort of thing all the time, as it seems the French are often bitching about how we've stolen a word of theirs and tainted it with our German-derived pronunciations. Just go to a restaurant in Paris and ask what they've got "a la carte" and then taste the haughty French spit in your drink. It just never occurred to me that other cultures might do the same to us. And, given the word sake," to say "cakey" actually sounds like a pretty reasonable interpretation of "cake." What's really funny is how they've taken this phrase, Japanized the pronunciation and then applied it as a metaphor for women who don't get married young enough for arbitrary societal standards.

It makes you wonder, of all the things that we could have given the Japanese, why fruitcake? Did all the people who have received fruitcakes they didn't want finally catch upon the idea of sending them to foreign countries? I really wonder whether they just heard the custom of passing around fruitcakes or if perhaps they developed it on their own because even they didn't want them.

All these thoughts passed through my mind before it occurred to me that I'd just been insulted. Maybe that's why I'm still a Christmas cakey.

* Wiki research shows that the term "Christmas cake" is used in the UK. In Japan, it's not a fruitcake at all, but just a spongy one marinated in liquor. The cakes are often saved to be eaten the following Christmas as a symbolic high five to the Ghost of Christmas Past.

The cakes are also used in a growing New Years custom involving hurling them at the girls who turned 25 that year without nabbing a husband. This last part was completely made up by me, but if you saw it in Wikipedia, I bet you'd believe it.