Why are Easter chocolates Kosher?

Annette asks this key question in response to my post People for the Ethical Treatment of Candy Animals.

I noticed many of the easter chocolate (crosses! In chocolate!!!) have a kosher seal on them. Why?????????

Judging from her entertaining blog Fun With Play Dough, Ms. van de Kamp-Wright is Jewish and totally perplexed by this and other issues around Easter.

But Easter? How do Christians explain to their children about somebody who was murdered by being nailed to a cross, was buried in a cave, and came back as if he was the villain in a horror movie who just won’t die?

While I do not disagree with Ms. van de Kamp-Wright’s characterization of the holiday (indeed I thought the line about the horror movie villain was both insulting to Christians and hysterically funny), I do not agree with it either. I must say that I have yet to encounter any religion whose ideas and holidays are in any way, shape or form rational. Mormons? Christian Scientists? Zoroastrians? They worship a bowl of fire instead of somebody who was murdered by being nailed to a cross, was buried in a cave, and came back as if he was the villain in a horror movie who just won’t die? How odd.

Is this story really any more or less difficult to explain then God sending an angel to kill all the first born of Egypt? “Oh honey, G-d who has promised to send a messiah, decided to execute thousands of children just to give Moses a chance to get lost in the desert for four decades.”

Turning water into wine is neither more or less absurd than the Almighty communicating via a shrubbery that is set on fire. My own faith is neither Christian nor Jewish but essentially Deist. Although I am a sect of one, my beliefs are deeply heart-felt and I practice them (pardoned the phrase) religiously. Undoubtedly I have practices and tenets that others would think certifiably loony. That is, after all, the nature of faith. If it were based on reason, we wouldn’t be called believers. People who worship in glass churches/temples/groves, etc. should not throw stones.

None of which answers Annette’s wonderful question.

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Stray thoughts posted while heading down to NYC…

1. Headline of the (Easter Sun) Day: Episcopal Churches Turn to U2 to Pack Pews. And you thought Bono had an ego problem before…
2. All time greatest name in marketing: Velvet Gogol Bennett of Procter & Gamble. How Ms. Gogol Bennett avoided a life as a performance artist is unknown.
3. "A federal judge gave a ninth-grader permission Thursday to recite a poem at a state competition that his school objected to, claiming it contained profanity." No, no. Not the one about the person from Nantucket, that would have made sense. The poem: Auden's The More Loving One. The words in question: Hell and Damn. The jurisdiction in which this took place: Reno, land of heretofore unexpected moral probity.
4. Scariest phrase of the day: litigation boutique as in "Simon Lesser PC, founded in 1997, is a litigation boutique centrally located in Midtown Manhattan." Be afraid, be very very afraid.
5. When “Kinder Chocolate Eggs” are outlawed, only outlaws will have “Kinder Chocolate Eggs”
6. When Chronic Candy is outlawed, only outlaws will have Chronic Candy: "Marijuana-flavored lollipops, gum balls and chocolates with names such as Hydro and Sticky Icky Buds could be banned in Alameda County under an ordinance being considered by the Board of Supervisors." Already banned in Chicago and Suffolk County, N.Y., and facing a possible ban in Georgia. Why haven't we heard from Reno on this one?

People for the Ethical Treatment of Candy Animals

According to the National Confectioners Association

• 90 million chocolate Easter bunnies are made for Easter each year.
• Marshmallow PEEPS® have been the top selling non-chocolate Easter candy brand for the last decade, outselling jelly beans.

STOP THE SLAUGHTER!!!