Every year when the end of October rolls around, households in the U.S. stock up on bags upon bags of chocolate, Tootsie Rolls and fruity hard candy that nobody really wants to eat but feels compelled to have on hand anyway. Sure, Halloween is about dressing up and embracing spookiness, but at its core, it’s ultimately a holiday that’s all about candy.
Easter doesn’t have quite the same reputation. Easter is a religious holiday, first and foremost, and most of the time, the food seems like an afterthought. The energy could not be more different: Halloween is about embracing the alternative, the weird; Easter, with its pastel color palette and wholesome image, feels like Halloween’s polar opposite.
But the two seemingly very different holidays have one thing in common: candy. At Halloween, children wander from house to house, collecting bags of it, and on Easter, parents hide it in plastic eggs for their kids to find and consume. Sure, on Easter, the candy is supposed to be an afterthought—celebrating the Christian prophet’s alleged rise from the dead takes center stage. As someone who’s not religious, though, candy was always the highlight of the holiday for me, and I suspect there are plenty of others who feel the same.
That all leads me to the thesis of this essay: Easter is the superior candy holiday. Constantly overshadowed by the louder, more gregarious Halloween, Easter has for too long been pushed to the side, condemned as a holiday for zealots who could not possibly responsibly engage in the type of gluttony required to truly enjoy a candy-based celebration. But this idea, folks, is a fallacy: Easter is and should be all about the candy, and it’s the best holiday for binging on baby animal-shaped sweets.
The first piece of evidence I present is the giant chocolate Easter bunny. Every spring, my parents would apparently ignore the advice of my dentist and place a giant chocolate bunny in my Easter basket, immediately prompting an 8 a.m. binge of milk chocolate, which they gracefully allowed despite the impending sugar rush I would undoubtedly be thrown into. Halloween doesn’t offer anything comparable to the ubiquitous chocolate Easter bunny. On the contrary, Halloween candy is, by definition, miniature. The scale of candy consumption isn’t even in the same league.
Secondly, Easter simply has better candy. The vast majority of the time, Halloween candy is just normal candy, perhaps packaged differently but ultimately identical to its non-celebratory blueprint. Easter candy is in a league of its own: Cadbury eggs and Peeps, perhaps the most iconic Easter candies, are specifically Easter-themed treats that you won’t find on store shelves year-round. This exclusivity makes them that much more of a treat when you finally get your hands on them. Even Reese’s peanut butter eggs are a completely different product than the original, with what seems to be a thinner layer of chocolate and more decadent serving of peanut butter.
And although the religious among us may argue that the focus of Easter shouldn’t be on the candy, it seems like the public agrees that Easter is, in fact, a candy holiday. A recent survey suggests that 47% of Americans believe that candy is the best part of Easter.
Despite this recognition that candy is the highlight of the holiday, Easter still does not get its due as a candy-focused celebration. Year after year, it’s outshined by Halloween, regarded as an afterthought of confectionary festivities. But it’s time that we’re finally honest with ourselves and embrace Easter for what it is: the best candy holiday. So, go ahead, eat your whole chocolate Easter bunny in one sitting. Reach for yet another Cadbury egg. Convince yourself that Peeps actually taste good and aren’t just fun to eat because of the texture alone. You won’t get another chance to experience candy in all its Easter-themed glory until this time next year.
Samantha Maxwell is a food writer and editor based in Boston. Follow her on Twitter at @samseating.