Is it Jane Parker fruit cake time?

For Jane Parker fruitcake fans (and believe me -- there is no bigger fruitcake nut than a Jane Parker fruitcake nut): The Jane Parker website is ready to take your orders. Go to www.janeparker.com and peruse the selection, including both light and dark fruitcakes, ranging in price from the 1-pound dark cake for $27.49 up to the 4.5-pound light fruitcake ring for $46.49.

If you aren't a Jane Parker fruitcake nut, a brief explanation: Jane Parker is the house brand for the A&P supermarket stores, which once were all over the South. Although A&P stores are now harder to find, some of its brands, including Jane Parker, are still made and sold at various chains around the country, such as PathMark, Waldbaum's and The Food Emporium.

For many people who grew up in the South in the 1950s and '60s, Jane Parker cakes were as much a part of Christmas as spray-on snow and aluminum Christmas trees with blue ornaments. So when the stores dwindled and the cake got hard to find, it become a yearly ritual to track down an elusive cake.

Nowadays, you can not only get them through the A&P company, you can find them on Amazon. But Santa doesn't travel as fast as he used to, so it's time to get those orders in.

Let me know if you spot an elf riding a Norelco shaver.