There I was, finishing up an afternoon of errands at my neighborhood CVS. Feeling good because I had gotten so much done. Looking forward to getting home, putting on some sweats, turning on the tree, lighting a candle, and listening to some Christmas music really loud. I was feeling positively festive as I worked my way down the candy aisle, looking for a treat or two that I could add to a gift basket. That's when I saw them, next to the Russell Stover hollow chocolate Santas. (btw, hollow Santas? We'll cover that another time). They were just below the Snickers Nutcrackers, to the left of Dove dark chocolate mint nuggets, and above the plastic candy canes filled with fake M&M's ...
I stopped dead in my tracks. My cart might have banged into the Whitman's Sampler display. I'm sure my chin dropped to the floor. I was stunned at the sight. Peeps. Holiday Peeps. You know, the love-em-or-hate-em, blow-em-up-in-the-microwave, neon yellow Easter treats, so sweet they make your teeth hurt, so mooshy they gum up in your throat no matter how long you chew them? Yeah, those. They are apparently not just for Easter anymore, and they are not just chicks. They are trees, stars, gingerbread men, even reindeer! And they claim to taste like sugar cookies and chocolate mousse! (Marshmallows that taste like chocolate mousse? Another topic for another time.)
I am not totally behind the times. I am aware that a few years ago, Peeps jumped onto the multicultural bandwagon: morphing into bunnies, turning from that day-glo yellow into sugary-sweet pastel shades of pink, blue and green, reminiscent of a baby blanket knitted by my grandma, if my grandma had ever knitted a baby blanket. But Holiday Peeps?
At the risk of offending my religious friends (both of them), I am going out on a limb and saying that Holiday Peeps are borderline sacrilegious. I know that both Easter and Christmas are about Jesus, his birth, his death, his re-birth. I got that. In five years of Catholic school, I got that. But in the gloriously commercial way that we celebrate our religious holidays, Peeps have no business on the Christmas candy aisle. I mean, Easter Peeps are okay, because Easter is, after all, about candy. But Christmas is about so much more: cookies, lights, tinsel, ribbons and bows, mistletoe, sleigh rides, and of course booze. Do we really need Holiday Peeps? Isn't that a little over the top?
And if we do indeed need Holiday Peeps, where are the Santa shapes? Where the Peeps people unable to secure the product license from North Pole Inc.?
But what really makes my head ache (along with my teeth) is that the Peeps people didn't even have the decency to call them what they are. They are not Holiday Peeps. They are Christmas Peeps. They do not come shaped like dreidels or stars of David. I mean, there is nothing, nothing, kosher about these tree- and star- and cookie-shaped Peeps .... I'm just sayin'.
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