A, E & U

As with most fine things, chocolate has its season. There is a simple memory aid that you can use to determine whether it is the correct time to order chocolate dishes: any month whose name contains the letter A, E, or U is the proper time for chocolate. Sandra Boynton

I'm not sure which genius decided that two very important times of year would overlap:

• The "Great Candy Bonanza" - which begins in October (Halloween), continues through Christmas, limps through January but picks up speed again in February (Valentine's Day) and rises to a crescendo in late March/early April with the appearance of chocolate bunnies & Cadbury eggs (Easter)
• The manic "Lose Poundage In Order To Look Decent in Shorts & Swimsuits" season - which starts in January with a flood of New Year's resolutions, disappears under the tide of chocolate unleashed in heart-shaped & egg-shaped form (and the annual attempt by the Girl Scouts of America to turn everyone into a Thin Mint addict)... then reasserts itself with a vengeance as the weather begins to warm up...

In my darker moments, I wonder if there is some sort of Prison Break-ish "The Company" conspiracy going on here... if some secret cabal of weight loss companies & candy manufacturers works together to put everyone on the roller coaster. You know, the one where we eat enough chocolate until we all look like Augustus Gloop... then diet like crazy, nibbling on "rabbit" food trying to have the same figure as a supermodel. (The roller coaster part is that we do this cycle over & over again!)

Some notes (read: complete & total digressions from the topic at hand):

• I'm actually not as much of a Thin Mint fan as I am completely enslaved to the joys of Samoas.
• If bunnies eat "rabbit food" (i.e., carrots & lettuce), how did they ever end up being made out of chocolate?
• Hollow chocolate bunnies bother me - they give new meaning to the phrase "empty calories". If you're gonna give me a chocolate bunny, I want a SOLID chocolate bunny.
• When I feel the aforementioned darker moments coming on, a quick trip to the store for caramel-filled Cadbury Eggs will clear it right up

This obsession about candy has a payoff, though - over the next four weeks, my messages in the Sunday morning service are going to revolve around four kinds of candy: Mentos, Peeps, M&M's & Jelly Belly's.

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Part of this article originally appeared in the 4/4/07 issue of the Grapevine, the newsletter of NewLife Community Church.