Fiona McCade: Chocolate capitalists are ruining my Easter

Published on Tuesday 19 April 2011 16:04

HAVE you ever felt exploited? OK, apart from every day at the petrol pumps? Believe it or not, there are some forms of callous manipulation that hurt even more than having to pay £1.35 a litre, and we're experiencing one right now.

Ever since the first Creme Eggs arrived (always a welcome whiff of spring in January), I've been counting down to Easter: that perfect union of creed and confection, doctrine and saccharine; that glorious, icing-covered celebration of the Resurrection. Unfortunately, Christianity's greatest festival has been well and truly hijacked by ruthless capitalists.

In the last 12 months, the cost of chocolate has rocketed. This means that some Easter eggs are now so expensive, they're practically a form of currency. One example - the fabled Galaxy Minstrels 324g egg - now retails at 6, up an astonishing 140 per cent on 2010 prices.

The chocolate manufacturers blame civil unrest in Ivory Coast for this inflation, but - much as I'm doing with the eggs themselves - I'm not buying it. I know things are bad in Ivory Coast, but chocolate prices in France have remained stable, so I reckon there's a cynical plot afoot to make a quick buck out of hapless British chocoholics.

As a British chocoholic, I refuse to be abused like this. Surely having easy access to an Easter egg is a basic human right? It's not even as though there's that much cocoa in your bog-standard Easter egg. It's mostly skimmed milk powder and hydrogenated palm kernel oil, so someone's making a big fat profit out of the fact that many of us enjoy getting bigger and fatter at this time of year.

Unfortunately, huge profits seem to be what Christian holidays are increasingly about. The Christ has risen; but so have prices. We can't even celebrate everlasting life without someone making a killing.

Until now, Christmas was always way ahead of Easter in the commercial exploitation stakes, but the greatest of the Christian festivals is fast catching up. We're pressured to give cards, bake all sorts of buns and cakes, and stick chicks and rabbits on top of everything. I even know a couple of families who have started giving presents, so how long before The Cost of Easter is yet another expense we'll be forced to save up for?

Whatever else we spend our money on, confectionery will be on most people's shopping lists this week, so I think it's fair to say that both the high spots of the UK's religious calendar are now firmly associated with gluttony. Certainly, Easter has become synonymous with pigging out on cocoa solids. It is, without doubt, the Great Chocolate Holiday.

I'm not sure where this started, but somehow the Holy Spirit's triumph over death has become a weekend-long binge on complex carbs. Quite literally, we've turned Jesus into My Sweet Lord, available in white, milk and dark, and personalised at Thorntons.Given the scale of the blasphemy, I suppose it's not surprising that we're now being made to pay for it.

I may be complaining about the cynical exploitation of our cherished traditions, but maybe it serves me right for using the most important liturgy of the year to indulge my heathen impulses, especially since I grew up thinking Good Friday got its name because that's when you could start stuffing yourself. Even as a child, I didn't consider Easter to be a real moveable feast, because I always spent it completely immobile, in front of the telly, with a constant supply of chocolate to hand.

So this year, as a protest against the omnipotence of the multinational confectionery conglomerates, I shall observe this spiritual time with more decorum and watch The Greatest Story Ever Told without its time-honoured accompaniment of egg-shaped cocoa mass and soy lecithin.

However, I could also play the chocolate manufacturers at their own game. Next Tuesday, I'll go and buy every discounted Easter egg I can find. I'll store my stock carefully until next year, then I'll flog everything at a profit, while still undercutting those evil capitalist confectioners. I may never go to Heaven, but my revenge will be sweet.