I Want Candy
Wednesday, February 16th, 2005People often bemoan the fact that most holidays — especially the one that just passed — have been commercialized by our money-grubbing, everyone-wants-a-piece-of-the-pie culture. These people are perhaps overlooking the single greatest contribution that this commercialization makes to our holidays: discount candy! Obtaining perfectly good candy at obscenely low prices just because it’s wrapped in the colors of yesterday’s event has certainly become the most important part of my holidays. In fact, it’s gotten to the point where I judge holidays not on their cultural significance but on what I can buy for 50 percent off the next day. What follows is a grading of the holidays, based on what really matters: the candy.
Valentine’s Day
One word sums up the candy scene on Valentine’s Day: chocolate. Long before the connection between chocolate and sex was scientifically confirmed (both release the same hormone, oxytocin, into the bloodstream), lovers were proffering each other chocolate in exchange for sex. Valentine’s Day brings a bevy of molded, foil-wrapped chocolates to the table, which isn’t much in the way of variety but, hey, it is chocolate, so you won’t find any complaints here.
The most oft-heard complaint about Valentine’s Day candy regards those candy message hearts. True, they taste like chalk, but you’re not supposed to eat them. Candy hearts exist to provide amusement, not to titillate taste buds, and amuse they do with such romantic overtures as MAD 4 YOU, YOU [illegible], [illegible]K, and READ MORE. Candy hearts inject fun into any Valentine’s Day, especially if you change all of the messages to something dirty.
The highlight of Valentine’s Day is the Whitman’s Sampler, not because it’s tasty (which it is) but because it’s accompanied by a little map that identifies the filling of each chocolate. You can use this as a guide to giving other people the ones you don’t like, but, more importantly, you can put it on a light-box and pretend to be a doctor examining an x-ray film. Prognosis: delicious! A-
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