Easter isn't about chocolate... or Jesus
Advertising from all sides: from one quarter it's BUY BUY BUY absurdly overpriced chocolate in various iconic shapes. From another it's BELIEVE BELIEVE BELIEVE religious twaddle. Both are sales pitches; if you are silly enough to believe then next week it will be GIVE GIVE GIVE followed by GUILT GUILT GUILT (you only get chocolate annually).
So, it is time (once again) to set the record straight. Easter is not about chocolate and it certainly doesn't have anything to do with Jesus. Easter is about sex. It's an ancient fertility rite. In the northern hemisphere, whence the ritual comes, it is held on the first full moon after the vernal equinox. The vernal equinox heralds the coming of spring; of new life. It is traditional in most pre-christian cultures to hold a fertility rite to ensure that spring arrives.
Which it generally does, leading to confirmation bias -- we held a fertility rite, spring arrived, therefore the ritual works. But the silliness of this is a matter for another blog entry; today I am concerned with the fact that Easter is a fertility rite. Before you tell yourself that that was then and this is now, I ask you what rabbits, ducks and eggs have to do with Jesus. The answer is they are fertility symbols. The church explains them as symbols of new life, which is strictly true while deliberately missing the point. This is a subtle and clever ploy to subvert a popular ritual they would never be able to stamp out -- they know their constituents would much rather get laid than get prayed if they thought about it, so it is vital the question never be considered.
Why the full moon? There are many notions about this but mostly I think it was due to the lack of floodlights in pre-christian europe.
Quite a number of pre-christian cultures held a fertility ritual at this time of year. The celts called it Beltane and held a big bonfire with a ceremony that revolved around a chosen man wearing antlers and known as the "Horned One", who had to chase down and shag a chosen priestess known for the duration of the ritual as the Goddess. The church did its best to demonise the whole thing, which is how the christian devil got his horns. It may also be how fire got associated with the devil but that is less certain.
There is a corresponding shindig for the other equinox; since it's autumn here we are actually celebrating Samhain in Australia.
So, if you want to celebrate Easter properly (leaving aside the fact that in Australia the seasons are reversed and you really ought to be doing it in October) but you feel it wouldn't be right without chocolate, then why not lay in some scented candles and some chocolate body paint. Traditionalists among us may prefer to blend their chocolate with chili. This combination was reserved for Aztec royalty, and was thought to be a potent aphrodisiac. If the Aztec diet was short of magnesium, it probably even worked.