My Favorite Thing About Easter






Call me a heathen, and you wouldn't be too far off. You know I'm not religious (or if you didn't, you know now), so I can't make up any hokey stories about the meaning of life or anything here, my favorite thing about Easter is really the Cadbury Creme Egg. I love the font on the packaging, I love the little chicken on the foil, I love the Cadbury bunny. When I was little, the creme eggs were the most exciting thing in my Easter basket, because they were always a little bit hidden because they are so heavy that they sink into the Easter grass. They were something that I saved. I first savored the different colored jelly beans, always searching to the bottom of my basket for the best ones (definitely red, orange, purple or white), always leaving the weird tasting colors like green or yellow and the bitter black ones for last. Usually the marshmallowy things were next, and the chocolatey things, and the creme egg was always saved for a special moment, when I would carefully peel off the foil (the best creme eggs are the ones where the foil doesn't stick to any sticky creme egg juice seeping from the egg, this means the fondant filling will be runny and soft, not hardened). Mmmm. I remember holding the heavy creme egg in my little hand, and how heavy it was compared to the other candies. This was clearly a sign of its goodness.

Now that I've gotten older, I think I've experienced some Easters with no creme eggs whatsoever, but I've blocked these from my memory. My mom knows what's important in life, and she sent me a box with a four-pack of creme eggs this week. My youthful savoring of the creme eggs has changed to a ravenous devouring of them, but I still enjoy them in the same way. But before I got my hands on my delicious creme eggs from over the ocean, I encountered a person with no reverence for creme eggs whatsoever: the postal delivery man. I'm sure he threw my creme eggs on the floor. The corner of the box was clearly dented, and I witnessed him throwing down an armload of packages for other people in my house when he came to my door. Actually, he didn't just come to my door, he ran to my door, as I've since seen him do in other parts of the neighborhood. Plus, I've heard the telltale crash of boxes when he enters a house. So this is normal practice for him. Is this guy crazy? Does he not know what precious cargo these boxes could hold? You can't buy creme eggs in this country, so obviously he has no idea what kind of blasphemy he is committing, but still, it isn't right to mistreat any package that way. Anyway, as soon as I saw him throw down the boxes, I thought "This can't be good". And then I saw on the customs slip on my box that it contained creme eggs. And the first thing I thought was "They're cracked." In my mind's eye, I could see their cracked chocolate shells and fondant running out, others with the foil sticking to the egg, a telltale sign of horrible disappointment. And sure enough, the top of one was broken, so broken in fact, that there was a hole, allowing air to reach the normally pleasantly highly viscous fondant, making it slightly hard. You see, the best way to eat a creme egg is to bite off the top, and suck the fondant out. But this isn't possible with a creme egg in which the fondant has experienced this kind of air exposure. You might as well just throw it away. But I forced myself to eat even that creme egg, because, let's be honest, I can't just go out to the store and buy some new ones, peeling them one by one until I find the best. And I'm certainly not in England, where they have vending machines in the train station selling creme eggs!












And now you can even knit clothes for the creme egg. OK, this person didn't put a creme egg in the picture, but if you go to the pattern for these, you will see that the name is "Cadbury Bunny Pattern". Obviously, this is a person with a passion for creme eggs. A passion so great it has driven this individual to dress the creme eggs. I think that's fantastic.