Forget about what half of the clichéd
Halloween articles have said about the true meaning of the holiday.
Costumes are only a close second. Instead, bear in mind that the
most significant is the candy. Wearing a costume as a kid might have
been somewhat fun, but the whole point of wearing tattered, smelly
clothes coupled with an ill-fitting mask is to get candy from your
stogy neighbors. Buy it yourself? You're a kid, you don't have any
money! Besides, it's more fun to get candy from people you don't
know because you never know what you're going to get. It's like a
metaphor for life: you pretend to be something you're not and hope
that you'll get something out of it that you'll like, though you're
more likely than not to walk away with a sack full of the black
licorice of unhappiness.
Anyway, there's a huge variety of candy to choose from, unlike
holidays such as Valentine's Day, where all you get is chocolate and
edible underwear made of fruit rollups. There is one potential
challenger to Halloween's dominance of candy-dom: Easter. In case
this is the first you've heard of it, Easter is the holiday during
which Christians celebrate Jesus rising from his grave after being
nailed to a piece of wood in the rudest way possible. The legend
goes that the J-man transformed the boulder sealing his tomb into a
chocolate rabbit and presented that rabbit to Pontius Pilate,
signifying that he would one day take the man's foot for a good luck
charm (incidentally, this led to the adoption of foot amputation for
those suffering from diabetes). Easter has its fair share of candies
as well, but how does it compare to the Halloween candy horde? Let
us consider a handful of selections from each holiday to determine
which is superior:
Easter
Chocolate rabbits
As stated, the chocolate rabbit is of great religious significance
to the holiday of Easter. It would be difficulty to imagine the
holiday without its ubiquitous milk chocolate hares. Halloween
boasts a number of different types of chocolates, but it can take
several boxes of those to equal the sheer tooth-blasting power of a
single chocolate rabbit. Furthermore, debate rages over the proper
way to eat one of these delicious idols. Ears first? Feet? Shave
some flakes into your coffee? Pop out those candy eyes (deluxe
models) and eat them first? Life is full of hard decisions.
Cadbury Creme Eggs
Equally important to the Easter tradition is the egg. It symbolizes
new life, as well as our own willingness to devour the unborn (or
only the white portion of the unborn if on a diet). The Cadbury
company decided years ago that the best way to capitalize on the
Easter egg would be to make the shell out of chocolate, and to fill
the interior with the most sugary substance they could find. The
resulting candy is so rich that you could eat a single egg in place
of a meal. Again, Easter's main weapon against Halloween is candy
that can only be eaten a little bit at a time.
Jelly beans
Jellybeans pull double duty, as there are dozens of different
flavors of jellybeans, and dozens of different brands as well. The
most basic kind include all the colors of the rainbow (including the
foul black licorice) and taste vaguely similar to fruits. The
branded varieties, like your Jelly Bellies, come in more eclectic
flavors like buttered popcorn, and croque monsieur. Like human
teeth, jellybeans have a hard shell and a soft, gummy interior.
Unlike human teeth, however, the gummy centers take a while to
digest, and so eating a few fistfuls of jellybeans should weigh you
down for the better part of the day. Occasionally, some will slip
into some kid's trick-or-treat back, but they're more at home in
Easter, as they fit better in those little plastic eggs.
Peeps
Marshmallows in the shape of baby chicks? No, it's not impossible.
You can eat a peep fresh for sure, but you can also let one sit out
for a bit. As hard as it gets, it will still taste fine. Put it in
the microwave and watch it expand! Do whatever you like to it; it
cannot be destroyed. This candy is Easter's trump card. Even the
chocolate rabbit is hard-pressed to be as iconic to Easter as the
Peep.
Easter grass
This stuff is definitely the weakest of the Easter candy. To those
of you who haven't tried any of it before, it tastes lousy and it's
not very filling. What's worse, I found that after eating and
passing it through my entire digestive system, it still hadn't
completely broken down into its basic nutrients. It's barely even
edible, if you ask me.
Halloween
Candy corn
Though you aren't likely to find much fresh corn come October, the
candy variety will just be entering its ripe phase. It's fairly
tasty, but god help you if it gets stale. At that point, you might
as well just sink your teeth into one of those chalky Valentine's
Day heart candies. Still, it's one of the oldest holiday-themed
candies, and though they make different colored variations of candy
corn for the different seasons, it is most assuredly a Halloween
thing. Sorry, Brachs.
Mellowcreme pumpkins
In the same thread as candy corn is the indisputably Halloweeny
candy pumpkins. Though made out of a similar material as candy corn,
candy pumpkins are far superior in taste. Furthermore, as pumpkins,
you can't really finagle them into any other holiday, except maybe
Thanksgiving. Damn turkey-eating Puritans. It should go without
saying, then, that the candy pumpkins represent the best chance for
Halloween to win this comparison of confections.
Bulk candy bag
Though not a candy in and of itself, bulk bags of candy make their
biggest showing around Halloween. Any other time of the year, you
could go to the store and buy yourself a giant bag of Skittles, but
come Fall, you can buy a bag of several smaller bags of Skittles.
Great if you're on a diet, but it's mostly for those little tykes
and their crappy store-bought costumes. If you don't want to commit
to any one type of candy, just grab a bulk bag of mixed candy.
Variety is the spice of life.
"Fun-sized" candy bars
Not meant to be sold individually (as explicitly written on the
wrapper), trick-or-treaters are bound to wind up with a dozen or so
candy bars that claim to be "fun sized". Each one is about the size
of a postage stamp. You can eat one in a single bite, and then the
next time you open your mouth you can ask what's so "fun" about
them. A real "fun-sized" candy bar would be several feet long and
equally wide. That way, they would all but require multiple people
to help you eat it. This in turn creates a part atmosphere, and thus
"fun-sized" becomes "party-sized". It's no small wonder that I'm not
in the candy industry.
Going into this, it would seem like Halloween would be the obvious
winner. In truth, though, Easter seems to have won the contest on
account of its many candies that will fill your stomach after only a
single bite. The peeps alone were critical in securing Easter's win
in the contest. However, as Colombo would say, "dere's just one more
thing..."
Peeps also come in a Halloween variety. They may be iconic come
Easter, but their presence in both holidays means points for both
parties. That means that Halloween is without a doubt, the defacto
candy holiday, with Easter a close, but forgettable, second. All
others need not apply. I'm looking at you, St. Patrick's Day.
