DRAKE (AP) - Every year for more than 20 years someone in the extended Blumhagen-Neumiller-Linnertz clan got a fruitcake for Christmas.

Not a new one. The same one.

While some family members have received the cake more than once, it's morphed into a welcome-to-the-family ritual.

"If you get the fruitcake, you're in," says Myron Blumhagen, who with his wife, Mary, will again host the annual family gathering.

"I'm not sure if it's harder than a fresh one or not," he said. "After 25 years I don't know if it's edible or not. But I don't think new ones are, either."

Tom Linnertz said it was his wife who gave the 3-inch high, 6-inch in diameter cake to brother-in-law Jim Neumiller about 25 years ago.

Neumiller, of Bismarck, remembers it differently. He said he gave the dessert to Linnertz in 1985 or 1986.

"Somebody started the rumor that he (Neumiller) loved fruitcake," Linnertz said from his Harwood home.

"My wife got him a fruitcake. He took it and didn't say anything, and the next thing, next year, I got it," Linnertz said. "Next year, I gave it to somebody else."

Last year's recipient, Neumiller's son-in-law, Ryan Kramer of Minot, came close to breaking the chain, saying he liked fruitcake and he wanted to eat it.

But family members intervened.

"He was just astounded that we wouldn't let him eat it," Linnertz said. "We had to take it away from him."

"I think I would have gotten kicked out of the family if I actually did" eat it, Kramer said. Now he must take his welcome-to-the-family gift and send it on to another in the clan.

Linnertz and Neumiller say the fruitcake is in surprisingly good shape.

"It still looks fruitcakey. Nobody's broken the seal on it," Neumiller said. "It should be interesting to see what it looks like."