Tomorrow is Good Friday, the first day of the Easter weekend, 2024. Despite the best efforts of the Cadbury bunny, the holiday isn’t about hiding eggs, eating candy and celebrating the eventual arrival of spring.
For Christians worldwide, it is a sacred religious holiday.
Like many of you, we will observe Good Friday.
Meaning? No wires in your inboxes.
No, there’s no shortage of news happening.
From the untimely demise of the Francis Scott Key bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, to the ongoing shenanigans by the NRA to the battle over the company presently known as Vista Outdoors, there is no shortage of news.
Fixating on the normal doesn’t seem to be appropriate for this weekend. The normal turmoil of modern life is actually counter to the spirit of Easter.
Easter isn’t about the normal, it’s about the extraordinary.
We might all be better off if we acknowledged more of the extraordinary in our lives instead of focusing on the troubling.
Despite the fact we’re still having ridiculously wild weather nationwide, spring is arriving.
If you’re anywhere near Washington, D.C., the National Cherry Blossom Festival is in full swing. And the National Park Service reports the Yoshino cherry trees are currently at peak bloom. That apparently happened on March 17 and the peak (actually a sustainable 70% bloom) is expected for several more days.
The Yoshinos around the tidal basin, if you’ve never seen them, are an experience. blossoms are reportedly blooming at a level unheard of in recent years. If you’re not able to make the trip, you can check them out yourself courtesy of the live “#BloomCam” supplied by EarthCam. If you want an event in early April, the National Cherry Blossom Parade is set for Saturday, April 13, 2024 from 10AM-Noon on Constitution Avenue between 7th and 17th streets. The parade is free, but seating is available at the East and West ends of the parade route for $25-30.
On “Easter Monday” the White House will host their annual Easter Egg roll on the South Lawn of the White House. We’re told it’s an “EGGucation” event, and cornball jokes aside, it will honor thousands of military and veteran families, caregivers and survivors. The first White House egg roll, FYI, was held April 22, 1878 after President Rutherford B. Hayes agreed to open the White House grounds on Easter Monday to children who wanted to roll Easter eggs. Apparently, the idea of egg rolling is an old European folk custom. Normally held during “Easter season” the “frolic” was a competition of kids rolling eggs down a hill during spring festivals.
As Easter baskets are being prepped, adults are seeing first-hand one of the biggest price hikes in years. Cocoa prices are literally “off the charts” this year-and that increase is being reflected in the costs of putting chocolate candies into Easter baskets.
For the first time -ever- cocoa prices topped $10,000 a metric ton on Tuesday. The world is facing what commodity brokers and chocolate makers describe as the largest cocoa shortage in the past 60 years. Black pod disease and swollen shoot virus have ravaged cocoa trees in Ghana and the Ivory Coast -the world’s largest cocoa suppliers. The two countries account for about 60 percent of the world’s cocoa output.
Choco-holics already know about the shortages. Many candy bars have experienced “shrinkflation” - smaller sizes at the same price as larger bars, or seen prices skyrocket. And skyrocket isn’t an exaggeration. In the past 12 months, cocoa prices have tripled -and are already up 124 percent this year.
Chocolate makers like Hershey and Nestle have seen their profits drop as they’ve delayed passing on costs. Hershey’s stock price has dropped twenty-two percent over the past 12 months. Nestle’s down thirteen percent.
In response, they’re trying to shift consumers over to “non-chocolate Easter treats” like “cookies ’n cream bunnies” and alternatives to the once-ubiquitous chocolate bunnies and eggs. One new candy is the Kit-Kat lemon crisp bar. Another tactic to help ease the chocolate withdrawal is Hershey’s mixing Haribo gummy bears in its assortment bags.
Easter, FYI, is the third-largest occasion in the U.S. for candy. Halloween is the largest, with the “winter holiday season” a close second.
Anyway…hope you get beyond all the chocolate uncertainty, the long list of other problems that occupy most of our time and attention -and have a blessed Easter weekend.
Back Monday — no fooling. And, as always, we’ll keep you posted.
— Jim Shepherd