We are never given the precise reason for the flurry
activity that starts each November as Buddy and his friend make fruitcakes and gather
the necessary ingredients, so we are left to infer the reason behind this Christmas
traidition from the text. Clues can be found that help us to do this. For example, we
are told that the "fruitcake weather" that starts off this activity "inaugurates"
Christmas and "fuels the blaze" of Buddy's friend's heart. In addition, we are told that
the cakes are for people that they have either met only once or not at all, as Buddy's
friend is very shy. Note what Buddy himself deduces about the way that they give cakes
to people they hardly know at all:
Is it because my friend is shy with everyone
except strangers that these strangers, and merest acquaintances, seem to us our truest
friends? I think yes. Also, the scrapbooks we keep of thank-you's on Whiet House
stationery, time-to-time communications from California and Borneo, the knife grinder's
penny postcards, make us feel connected to eventful worlds beyond the kitchen with its
views of a sky that
stops.
This quote introduces
a secondary motive: the world of Buddy's friend is very limited and is defined by the
"sky that stops." Giving cakes each year to so many different people means that Buddy
and his friend are able to feel connected with a bigger world beyond the vistas of their
lives and experience.
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