{"id":689,"date":"2009-04-10T18:20:59","date_gmt":"2009-04-10T18:20:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/?p=689"},"modified":"2009-04-10T18:20:59","modified_gmt":"2009-04-10T18:20:59","slug":"egg-cellent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/2009\/04\/10\/egg-cellent\/","title":{"rendered":"Egg-cellent"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>No matter where you fall in the religious spectrum, you can get behind the <a href=\"http:\/\/quandmeme.net\/blog\/000019.html\">Rabbit of Easter<\/a>. He bring of the chocolate &#8212; and that, quite frankly, is a bunny miracle that none of us want to examine too closely. <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/apps\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/snickersegg.jpg\" alt=\"Snickers Egg\" title=\"Snickers Egg\" width=\"200\" height=\"228\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-693\" \/><\/p>\n<p>We are in Ireland for our second Easter, so some of the subtleties of the season have become more apparent. <!--more-->A Midwestern American&#8217;s Easter is not subtle. A common sight in a young Christian American&#8217;s life is the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/minidriver\/2360797871\/\">Easter Basket<\/a>. A wicker (or plastic) basket, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/vorannon\/129466602\/in\/set-72057594108450985\/\">filled with &#8220;grass&#8221;<\/a> and chocolate &#8211; chocolate eggs, chocolate bunnies, chocolate pieces. If you are really special, there might be a <a href=\"http:\/\/www.chicagotribune.com\/features\/lifestyle\/chi-peeps-photogallery,0,3876424.photogallery\">Peep<\/a> or two to introduce a more pure form of sugar into the mix. A token to good dental hygiene could be made by throwing in a toothbrush or some floss. A classic American sight, Will, I and most of our childhood friends received &#8211; and you probably did too, if your childhood was middle-class and middle-America.<\/p>\n<p>In Ireland, they take a different approach. Instead of a basket of goodies, they go for what we refer to around the Bugle newsroom as the &#8220;Heroic&#8221; egg. The &#8220;Heroic&#8221; egg is <a href=\"http:\/\/living.morethan.com\/2008\/03\/19\/easter-eggstravaganza\/\">a total package<\/a> &#8211; a box, sometimes containing just one large egg, and other times supplemented with some ancillary chocolate pieces. The packaging is rather intimidating and overwhelming.<br \/>\n<img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/apps\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/milkybaregg.jpg\" alt=\"Milkybar Egg\" title=\"Milkybar Egg\" width=\"500\" height=\"399\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-692\" srcset=\"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/apps\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/milkybaregg.jpg 500w, http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/apps\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/milkybaregg-300x239.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><br \/>\nSo is the egg. But Will <img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/apps\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2009\/04\/openegg.jpg\" alt=\"Opened Egg\" title=\"Opened Egg\" width=\"300\" height=\"259\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-691\" \/>discovered that the egg is hollow, with a surprisingly thin shell. The chocolate is good, but in lesser quantities than an American Easter basket. Too bad it wasn&#8217;t filled with the product advertised on the box!<\/p>\n<p>Everybody makes a &#8220;Heroic&#8221; egg &#8211; Snickers, Mars, a multitude of Cadbury brands and even the high-end Irish chocolatiers like Lily O&#8217;Brien. Speaking with some of my colleagues, each had fond remembrances of receiving their first egg. I didn&#8217;t have time to dig into whether the gift of the Heroic Egg was motivated by one&#8217;s age or as a reward &#8212; mainly because Good Friday is a public holiday in Ireland and I have the day off.<\/p>\n<p>One of the fun aspects of living in a foreign country is the differences in celebrations, like the &#8220;Heroic&#8221; egg. I can&#8217;t wait to be in Luxembourg next Easter to see what the local traditions are. Who knows &#8211; we could be getting some chocolates <a href=\"http:\/\/holiday-kids-crafts.suite101.com\/article.cfm\/easy_french_easter_craft_for_kids\">from a bell<\/a> or something equally unlikely.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>No matter where you fall in the religious spectrum, you can get behind the Rabbit of Easter. He bring of the chocolate &#8212; and that, quite frankly, is a bunny miracle that none of us want to examine too closely. We are in Ireland for our second Easter, so some of the subtleties of the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[15,11,7],"tags":[226,607,606,513,603,601,602,759,153,605,604,767],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=689"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":700,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/689\/revisions\/700"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/bakkerbugle.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}