When the children were small, Easter eggs were a repeat of the excitement of Christmas. But now they are adults, I’ve decided we need a new Easter tradition that’s safer than all that sugar and more authentic than eggs.
There are two data points I’ve considered. First there’s the evidence of Dr Robert Lustig’s research on the effects of sugar. You can watch the video (which is probably the most important hour of video I have watched recently) but the relevant advice in this context is to treat sugar as if it were alcohol – in moderation and knowing it will harm you otherwise. Second, the Gaelic expression for “water of life” is uisge beatha, which has given us the English word whisky.
Joining these together, it does no more harm to drink whisky than to eat chocolate; in fact, since it’s easier to detect the effects of whisky on your body, it may well be safer than chocolate. Whisky is also sufficiently symbolic of the message of new life at Easter to make an ideal token. As a consequence, I’ve decided on a new tradition for the adults in our extended household who consent. Instead of chocolate eggs, they each have 200ml bottles of single malt whisky.
This year it’s Caol Ila, and we’ll be toasting new life with the water of life a little later. Happy Easter!
Filed under: Spirituality | Tagged: Chocolate, Easter, Food, Tradition, Whisky |
Wild Webmink 
water into wine, good; eggs into whisky, better.
[…] A New Easter Tradition (webmink.com) […]
Greetings – The Bellejar article you linked “Easter is not named after Ishtar” refers to a Facebook meme that was just plain silly. It was factually inaccurate because it pointed to words that sound alike in different languages as evidence of relationship and because it conflated two goddesses, the anglo-saxon Easter and the sumerian Ishtar. However, the roots of the Christian resurrection story in the Sumerian Ishtar story appear much better grounded: http://awaypoint.wordpress.com/2013/03/28/ancient-sumerian-origins-of-the-easter-story/