March 19, 2010
Something has been bothering me.
I have my facts about religious holidays straight: Christmas is about Santa and a tree; Halloween is ghouls, death, and candy; Independence Day is about how God loves America best; and Easter, perhaps the most holy of them, is the season of the Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg.
This year, with this commercial, the good people at Hershey have inspired me to plumb the depths of origin of that most sacred of symbols, their hallowed peanut butter egg.
Insidious traitors in the marketing department tried to pass off a similar product at Christmas, a peanut butter tree, but it did not work. You just do not fuck with Christmas. The tree, obviously, was a false symbol created to sap some of Santa’s profits. Shame on them. I digress—back to the egg.
I know the egg comes from God just like babies do, but in this commercial Marvin Gaye implies there is more to the source of the egg than God. The jar of peanut butter and the chocolate bunny seem to “do it”, if you know what I mean, suggesting that is the source of the egg. But from which, the jar or the bunny? Bunnies don’t lay eggs, jars of peanut butter don’t lay eggs, and I didn’t know if jars of peanut butter laid bunnies or not, so I surfed the Internet to learn more.
I found this: BUNNY 911: If your rabbit hasn’t eaten or pooped in 12-24 hours, call a vet immediately!
So it’s not an egg, it’s poop? Is that what this means?
The good people at Hershey and Marvin Gaye have called into question everything I hold dear about Easter.
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“Trying to hold back this feeling for so long.”
Kathy, for years I’ve been celebrating an alternate version of Easter that is focused around those Cadbury Creme Eggs. You know, the ones with that nasty looking creme (complete with yellow yolk) that doesn’t really taste all that great but contains enough sugar to keep a room full of preschoolers bouncing of the walls for two weeks. What’s interesting about your observation here is that the Cadbury Creme Eggs also seem to come from bunnies.
I might just pass on Easter this year because I am not going to celebrate the Peeps version.
Kathy, you have inspired me. This year, instead of making my traditional stigmata cookies for Easter, my cookies will depict a cross section of a rabbit’s ovaries, complete with chocolate egg fetuses.
Thank you.
A dear friend of mine has a family tradition involving the purchase of all the peeps possible during peeps season. For the remainder of the year, the peeps turn up in mailboxes, flower beds, glued to birthday presents, you get the idea. One morning last August we found a greeting message scraped in green peeps on the driveway. Their little peepy remains were shredded everywhere! I called our friend to learn that she had been out late drinking and stopped by on her way home, didn’t want to wake us up, so got the green peeps out of her glove box to write a note on the driveway.
See, peeps are not for eating.
I can’t get past the possibility that all these years my beloved eggs were really poop.
Peeps make pretty good adhesive, too, if you need to stick a note on someone’s door, say.
So does poop, come to think.
Oh, Kathy, don’t worry. They are too nicely and uniformly shaped to be poop. They are eggs, laid by bunnies. Don’t let the media sell you their lies.
[...] Cindy S.: This year, instead of making my traditional stigmata cookies for Easter, my cookies will depict a cross section of a rabbit’s ovaries, complete with chocolate egg fetuses. [...]
Cindy, if I purchase a jar of peanut butter and a bunny and leave them alone in the dark with a little Marvin Gaye on the stereo will I end up with an unlimited supply of peanut butter eggs?
You may be right Cindy. I Googled bunny poop and found this. Just like people poop, a variety of sizes.
I hate when I walk in on these discussions at the end.
You never know, Josh. This might only be the beginning, it is nearly cocktail hour in the UK.
Rick, are you saying things get more interesting ’round here when the Brits start drinking?
No idea at all if you’re interested in a semi-serious answer about this, but I also don’t really care. See how that works?
Easter is half-Christian (Jesus rising from the dead) and half-pagan (celebration of spring and fertility). They actually kinda work together, with that whole new-life thing happening. So eggs + rabbits = fertility symbols, for obvious reasons.
As for chocolate — well, we just like chocolate. Obviously, it’s new, as chocolate’s a new world thing, Easter (both pagan and Christian) very much an old world thing. People used to eat hot cross buns. It’s all marketing, was even in the 19th century. So adding peanut butter = eh. Nothing sacred about a chocolate egg.
“See how that works?”
We like that around here, Tim.
Michael, not necessarily more interesting, though it might well be. Just that the conversation often picks back up again.
Tim reminds me of an Easter Mass I attended with my family when I was a youngster. It was toward the end of the mass, after communion, and we were anxious to leave and get to the big Easter Egg hunt. I think a man in a bunny suit started the whole thing, but it could have been something else. What I remember is that these people started yelling from the back of the church, “Pagans! Pagans! You’re all Pagans!” Like a good catholic priest, the pastor ignored the entire scene and went about his business without acknowledging the commotion.
I think this was before the year my sister, the altar-girl, passed out while holding the book for the priest during the gospel. In that case the priest continued as they dragged my sister out of the church and I was summoned up to take her place.
Thanks Tim, that’s interesting. I wasn’t really questioning whether or not the Reese’s Peanut Butter Egg is sacred. It is sacred in my mouth — I love those damn things.
We’ll still hide candy around the colorfully decorated pentagram in the yard, like we do for every holiday. It will be difficult not to think about bunny poop, that’s all. I’ll get over it.
What’s your take on Independence Day?
Love your story Michael. Kathy I share your love of Reese’s: eggs, cups, m&m’s, whatever form. But I try to leave them alone. They’re a sin.
Hey. Hey! Where’s my cocktail!
Peggy. Her name is Peggy.
Our peep-scraping friend’s name is Peggy.
I just think that was an important piece of information.
Oh, and I’ll never eat chocolate again.