The Christmas season is a bad time for a gentleman’s testicles.
Chances are pretty good that at some point they will be forced to attend the ballet, for one thing. This ballet will be called “The Nutcracker,” a word that sends chills up a man’s spine and pulls his own nuts right up into his body cavity for safe-keeping. This ballet features lots of mice and candy and children. Its most famous dance is performed by a fairy.
This would be the Sugar Plum Fairy, named for a vintage confection popular back when the Nutcracker was written. As you can see from this recipe, it asks you to “boil your plums.” No fellow wants to do this. Boiling sugar is combustibly scalding hot. Suggest to a man that he boil his plums “till they have cast their juice” is to castrate him with cruel words indeed.
Cooks and Confectioner’s Dictionary, John Nott, 1723
Also from this book: Blood Pudding, Tits, Mead, Scurvy, Scourge Of The Seas, Quackery, Gastropub / Gastropig: Eating High on the Hog, Take Your Lumps, Pigeon à la Française, This Little Piggy...