When I was really little, I remember being brought to a store on Cape Cod—I think it was the Zayre in Hyannis— to participate in an Easter Egg hunt. As with most days when you’re small, the recollections are few and in punctuation:  the (relative) crowd of people there, me tottering about looking for Easter eggs. Suddenly stopping when I came upon an oddly-placed empty clothes rack that made me think that I’d taken a wrong turn. Then the group of adults running up to me while exclaiming, “You won!”  I remember quite vividly thinking that I had no clue how I’d accomplished winning; my brain was still stuck on the oddity of the empty clothes rack.  As usual, I said nothing and just went with the flow.

Following the hunt there was a small presentation with three big Easter baskets wrapped up in cellophane—each basket a different color scheme. The organizers told me to choose the one that I wanted and I decided that I liked the blue one. I pointed at it. But my pointing skills must have been undeveloped because someone picked up the brown basket and brought it over. There was a photo taken for the local paper. I continued to reflect on the fact that I was now standing next to the basket I didn’t select but I couldn’t be bothered to say anything about it. After all, it was already a neat enough thing that I was one of the few kids going home with a prize. And I was always taught to say thank you. I just went with the flow.

Once home, I am sure that I unwrapped the thick cellophane covering and dug into the basket to see what was inside. No doubt there was Russel Stover chocolate, some plastic eggs and of course the plastic green “grass” that lines the bottom of the basket. There was also a stuffed brown and white bunny that I kept for many years after that Easter– even though I’d noted from the very beginning that its quality was not nearly as nice as the other toy animals in my bedroom. I wasn’t being judgy about it, these were all just data points in the conveyor belt of experiences that passed through my childhood.  

In talking about Easter, here I’m only speaking of it in terms of being a High Candy Holiday; I will leave the religious observations to those far more qualified. Nonetheless, even in a very Catholic place like Italy, Easter is still served up with plenty of confections that mostly mirror the stuff I loved as a kid. But Easter baskets are not commonplace- rather, it’s all about the enormous chocolate eggs. They take up an impressive amount of real estate in the supermarkets (where things like colomba and pizza di pasqua are already jockeying for competition). The eggs look really cheery, and honestly they’re kind of a welcome obstruction after having waded through the dark weeks of wintertime. 

The one not-so-amazing thing about being surrounded by all this high-quality chocolate is that it does kind of wear you down. It’s a well-known fact that the chocolate in European supermarkets is superior to what you find in the American ones. No Whitman’s Sampler box is ever going to beat out a tray of Ferrero Rocher candies. And since it has now been three weeks of me staring at massive chocolate Easter Eggs, I find myself thinking that I need one of these in my life. 

Not that it really matters, but the one egg that I think I might buy is made by Strega, the manufacturers of a crazy yellow liquor in Benevento of the same name and also awards the most prestigious literary prize for Italian literature each year. While I’ve never bought a bottle of this in my life, I have to admit that the company does make some pretty decent chocolate. And they do have some plastic wrapped eggs that greet me every time I walk into the supermarket. They are in dwindling supply and I always half-wonder if I should buy one. But I haven’t yet. 

On average, all of these chocolate eggs contain about 300g of chocolate and they run anywhere from 7 to 20 euros a piece. If you buy one, what you are purchasing is a hollow egg balanced atop a plastic platform that is wrapped up in a bunch of cellophane plastic. Maybe there’s a small sorpresa inside of the egg. 

Now as a kid, I would find this all very exciting. Just like how I used to feel each Sunday morning when my mom would set out Easter Baskets for each of us: the colors, the tests, the unusual once-a-year treat. But now I am older. My brain is clogged up with too many practical thoughts that don’t send me diving for the tower of chocolate eggs. 

What I think now is, “Do I really want to pay 13 euros for 300 grams of chocolate when I can walk over to the chocolate aisle and buy the same food in a “less fun” tablet form for a fraction of the price? And let’s talk about the single-use plastic situation going on with all of this Easter celebration. Maybe I’ve been ruined by watching a program on the reality of plastic recycling (surprise: a lot of our packaging really can’t be recycled). I look at these eggs and ask myself, “Do I really want to further contribute to that mess by buying one of these overpriced eggs?” I don’t. 

It’s really a mark of getting older when this is how I’m dissecting the Easter experience. There is an uncomplicated joy that comes with being a kid, and that joy is magnified when unexpectedly neat things get handed to you. You’re not stopping to reflect on the relative expense of something—nor are you probably thinking about the sheer amount of crap that you as one human being will consume (mostly in plastic) when you are young. Now I find myself comparing two versions of chocolate, and coming to the conclusion that we humans like and will pay more money to get something in a different form. Even if the end state is more or less the same (you will eat it and then it will be gone). I think of chocolate and then I think of other comparable things that I consume like cars, shampoo, pain medication….

So after all of this thinking, I’m left feeling a little unimpressed with myself. That’s because If I had any doubt about it before now, I can now officially call myself a killjoy who has lost all sense of joy when it comes to Easter traditions. It’s a pretty wild thought experiment, juxtaposing who you’ve become with what you remember about yourself. All of that knowledge that you accumulate as you age, data points, information, chocolate by the kilogram…

But I’m still thinking about the Strega egg anyway. Why? Because I’m irrational. And probably more so because I still find the idea of Easter Egg hunt to be fun. I guess in the end, we’re a mishmash of what we once were with what we are now. I’ve still got chocolate left from the Trappist Monastery that I visited a few weeks back, and that will suit me just fine.