Frruit cake in Eileen’s garden. 12/22/16. Paul Goldfinger photo ©  Click to see the nuts.   ©  If the frogs eat this they’ll croak.

B Paul Goldfinger, Editor @Blogfinger

Every Christmas my father would come home from work, not with a bonus, but with a fruit cake. I never knew to expect anything else, but I did learn to like fruitcakes.  Fast forward, and my wife Eileen never liked this particular pastry, so we never had it.  But last weekend, I spotted a display at Wegmans which had small fruitcakes that looked really festive and delicious.  So I bought one. She looked at it with disdain.  But when I opened it to have with coffee, it was moist and good.  She even tried a piece.  But then, I looked at the ingredients which numbered about 40. It turned out to be a veritable chemical concoction.  The main ingredient was corn sugar.

But, a little research indicates that fruit cakes have many variations around the world, and the culinary origins can be traced to the Roman Empire where they actually offered the world something sweet besides conquest, slavery, pillaging,  and men in short skirts  (which they got from the Greeks.)

Eileen’s Christmas cactus. 12/16. Paul Goldfinger photo. The prehistoric figure is explained below. ©

The other sign of Christmas for us is Eileen”s Christmas cactus which remarkably blooms at Christmas time each year in our entrance hallway . The primitive figure in the pot was found when digging up the garden at our Ocean Grove house.  I imagined that some ancient maritime group lived around here, perhaps emigrants from Phoenicia or ocean fishing American Indians who made figurines.  I often wondered about it.

One day I took a really close look, and on the back I found two initials and a copyright sign   ©.  It didn’t say where it came from , but unfortunately I can’t sell it to the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

As most of you know, we have Hanukkah and Christmas at the same time this year.   Hanukkah commemorates a Jewish revolt by a group of revolutionaries—the Maccabees against their oppressors in the Seleucid Empire  (blame it on the Greeks..)   The Jews won  (I like to think of my ancestors as warriors rather than dentists and accountants.   That is why I am so proud of my uncles, all 5, who served in WWII.)  I am also reminded of the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) whose bravery has saved the Jewish people there many times.

The crowning achievement of Hanukkah was to reclaim the holy 2nd Temple in Jerusalem  (which later was destroyed by the Romans.)  The miracle of the oil is less well decumented. Hanukkah is not even mentioned in the Bible, but there are reasons for that.  The story is basically true.

The history of Chanukkah seems simple, but if you are a historian, you will find it to be pretty complicated.  Anyhow, it occurred about 160 years before the birth of Christ.

In the past Blogfinger has acquainted Grovers with the Chavurah (Jewish fellowship in Ocean Grove founded in 2007).)  Here is a link to our 2014 piece on that subject. This year the Chavurah met at a member’s home to talk about the holiday and to eat traditional foods such as deep fried potatoes pancakes (latkes) which were crisp and delicious–home- made by Eileen.  She wrote the cookbook on heart healthy cooking for our book “Prevention Does Work” but in the holiday spirit she laced them with Pepcid and they were enjoyed by all.

https://blogfinger.net/2014/12/17/diversity-in-ocean-grove-2/

So, on Blogfinger, we have some music which incorporates two great religions:     We have the Klezmonauts playing a well known carol.  It is from their album “Oy to the World—a Klezmer Christmas.”