Chocolate, chocolate, chocolate...oh yeah, and that thing called Easter

Easter has sort of sneaked up on us quietly this year, hasn’t it? I mean, sure, crème eggs appeared in Tesco as soon as they’d sold off the last of their Christmas biscuits and tinsel, but all things chocolatey and egg-shaped seem to have stayed confined to one aisle in the supermarkets and last time I walked past Clintons I wasn’t assaulted by anything yellow, fluffy or bearing two rabbit ears so it seems they’ve kept a bit of a lid on their usual Easter mania too. Which means, for once, as an atheist I’m not feeling too guilty about not buying into the whole over-hyped bonkersness that surrounds Easter. What the heck is the point of Easter anyway? Christmas is different; it’s the one time of year when we’ve all got a good excuse to get together with friends and family, spoil them rotten with presents and food, and have a bit of a party and good cheer at the darkest time of year. Easter, on the other hand, seems to have turned into a festival of chocolate, whose meaning is lost to all except those who go to church every Sunday.

Don’t get me wrong, I love chocolate as much as the next red-blooded female, but I seriously wonder about the effect the consumer culture has had on Easter. One thing in particular has, especially in recent years, made me think twice about why we buy each other Easter eggs. We’ve all come across Fairtrade products on our weekly shop; goodness knows I’ve banged on about them on here enough in the past. Lots of us now opt for Fairtrade-certified tea, coffee, bananas, pineapples, sugar, and chocolate. Recently, both Cadbury’s and Nestle have switched to Fairtrade-certified suppliers of Cocoa for their Dairy Milk and Kitkat bars, which would tend to suggest that these big multinational companies see sufficient consumer demand for Fairtrade chocolate to start promoting their most popular products as Fairtrade-certified. So....where are all the Fairtrade-certified Easter eggs?

Ok, fair enough, there are some. Green & Black’s Maya Gold Easter eggs are Fairtrade- certified, and incidentally the most devilishly delicious I-could-eat-this-forever-and-not-get-bored chocolate ever to exist in the known universe. Divine chocolate also usually come out with a whole range of egg-shaped fairtradiness. But your average supermarket shelf is still dominated by Smarties and Creme eggs, neither of which is Fairtrade-certified, even though apparently consumer demand for Fairtrade chocolate is increasing. This is especially galling when you remember that Easter is still a very Christian festival, yet apparently Christian principles of charity and fairness are still missing from the Easter tradition of giving out chocolate eggs to each and every acquaintance. However, if you look to major Christian establishments such as the respective Churches of England and Scotland, as well as the Catholic Church, it soon becomes clear how concerned they are about issues such as the environment and Fairtrade. As difficult as it is to get a straight answer out of your average bible basher, if you do a bit of pressing you find that most religious folk agree, at least in principle, that Fairtrade is better than rob-them-blind trade. Both Christian Aid and Cafod have close ties to Anglican and Catholic churches in the UK, and these two organisations are right up there with Oxfam in terms of how much work they put into overseas aid and development, so it is not as if the Christian faith happily turns its back on the poverty caused by biased trade agreements and wildly fluctuating market commodity prices.

So all these colourful boxes in the confectionary aisle, have they actually got anything to do with the real meaning of Easter? Apart from the fact their contents are egg-shaped, probably not. So, why do we always buy so many each year? Because Nestle, Cadbury’s, and Kraft amongst others, have got us hooked on their rich, sweet chocolatey goodness. This year, however, I’m defiantly going to be thinking about where my Easter eggs came from. I’ll give you a clue – I’m pretty sure it’s not the Easter bunny. Buy as many Creme eggs as you want – just don’t pretend you’re buying them “because it’s Easter”.

xx