Candy Holidays - April 2005

Spring is a great time of year. The sun is finally shining, neighbors are starting to come out of the woodwork in their shorts (by the way, I apologize ahead of time to my neighbors for blinding them with my pasty white legs), and kids are playing in the parks again.

While spring is a joyous time, heralding the warm, but not yet stinking hot, weather, it’s also a little sad. You see, Spring, and the end of Easter marks the end of Candy season. This year, Easter came early, so Candy Season ended early as well. The fellow sugar junkies out there know what I’m talking about.

Candy Season starts around late August, when the stores start hauling out the Halloween candy. Aisles and aisles of orange and brown candies shaped like pumpkins, witches and ghosts. Never mind that it's still 4,000 degrees outside; our teeth are getting ready for Fall.

Then on midnight November 1, the Halloween candy is dumped in the bargain bin, and replaced with the red, green, silver and gold Christmas candy. At my house, the winter holidays are a double sugary delight with the inclusion of Chanukah “gelt”, those chocolate coins in the gold foil wrappers!

Then on New Year’s Day, the Christmas candy gives way to the red and pink Valentine’s Day sweets for our sweeties. Heart-shaped boxes of chocolates and the little Necco candy hearts with those dorky sayings are there to guilt husbands and boyfriends for the next month and a half.

Then on February 15th, all the hearts get chucked into the half-off bin to make room for the marshmallow Peeps, pastel jelly beans, and Cadbury eggs.

And then the day after Easter, it's over. The shelves get filled with water wings, pool toys, and flip-flops, and we're back to the boring, everyday, candy. Sure, some of the candy manufacturers try red, white and blue for 4th of July, but it's not the same. No one really celebrates that candy like they do during the other holidays.

Perhaps there's so much going on in the summer that candy companies feel we don't need comfort food -- or the fat during shorts and swimsuit season (but remember - a lot of the non-chocolate candies are low and no-fat! On the other hand, they’re also not chocolate.)

Whatever the reason, I still miss the specialty candies of the holidays. My candy dishes just don’t look right with water wings.