Chocolate, chocolate everywhere...

On the way to visit my family today we saw a parade of churchgoers walking alongside the road we were driving on. Some were carrying crosses and Hubbie pointed out to our boy that this was taking place. It reminded me that for some people Easter is about a lot more than chocolate eggs and Bond movies on the telly. For my family it is pretty much about chocolate, eating food and hanging out for the long weekend. In particular for me it's catching up with as many Come Dine With Me episodes as possible and telling myself that I'm not going to ruin my diet and pig out (which is not helped when Hubbie has given me a chocolate Percy Pig !!)

I should know this, but I have no idea why we associate Easter with chocolate eggs. It might be that Cadbury were particularly hot on selling the idea of an ovoid filled with fondant and created a parallel celebration to the resurrection. Maybe sales start flagging at this time of year with Valentine's Day and Mother's Day gone - after all Father's Day isn't until June. It's not really much of a chocolate day anyway since Red Letter Days sold us on the idea of vouchers for adrenaline events so that grown men can pretend to be James Bond instead of just watching Daniel Craig drive fast cars.

My own conspiracy theory is that it's the diet industry that creates all these food related celebrations so that we are always fighting to lose weight for something. The post Christmas diet, the pre-holiday diet, the pre and post Easter diet, it's never ending !! Many moons ago when I was still at university I stayed at the student house over Easter to do some work and was following a low fat diet plan. Of course I was twenty years younger than I am today so I was already slimmer to start with, but it's the only time I've actually lost weight over Easter as instead of eating chocolate I was exercising every day and eating sensibly.

The problem with everyone knowing you love chocolate is that there is so much of it out there and even when you say you don't want any it still finds you. The Easter Bunny has been very generous to us this year, so I'm going to pace myself and hopefully the damage won't leave me looking ovoid !