h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Someone I didn't know came and sat opposite my desk this week - an Asian lady, working in HR or something. Anyway, at mid-morning tea break she suddenly produced a box of Celebrations-brand chocolates and offered me one.

My face lit up. "What's the celebration?" I asked, as I took a tiny Bounty chocolate (I'd say it was about a quarter of what I'd describe as 'fun size' - four of them together might have constituted fun on the palate).

"Don't you know? It's Diwali!" she said.

I chatted to her about the festival, and what her plans were for the weekend to celebrate. She said she wasn't into all that candle stuff, but she would visit her family and eat lots of chocolate.

***

Diwali is one of those moveable feasts. It seems to happen some time between mid October and mid November, a bit like Easter does in March/April. This year it's arriving between two UK traditional festivals: Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night. In fact the Bridgwater illuminated Guy Fawkes carnival is taking place on the same day as Diwali, Sunday 3rd November.

Halloween, a few days earlier, used to be all about witches and apple dunking, but in recent years it has undergone a rapid transformation into the American version of Halloween - horror movies, trick or treat, and, yes, more chocolate. Themed chocolate. Severed body parts chocolate - that sort of thing.

Yet there's another festival that has been in preparation for longer: Christmas. Still two months to go, but I've seen decorations and shop displays. Selfridges in London unveiled their window display the other week. Harrods opens its Santa's Grotto on 2nd November, for crying out loud. And you won't be short of excellent chocolate-based gifts should you decide to visit, I have no doubt.

Well, that's about it for chocolate-based festivals, isn't it. Oh, no, of course not. We're forgetting the daddy of all chocfests that is Easter, in Spring 2014. Don't let anyone tell you there's anything behind this festival apart from unrestrained gluttony.

***

And so, in November 2013 I make this prediction. When the world's religions finally come to their senses and stop beating the bejesus out of each other (or the bemohammad, bebuddah or bejehovah for that matter), they will unite to worship together in the temple of the holy cocoa bean.

The Maya used cocoa beans as money.

But then, their form of chocolate was an unsweetened cocoa drink, very bitter.

Chocolate has somehow got out of hand, too. In their efforts to come up with more and more flavours, as well as shapes, the manufcturers now tempt us with all sorts of beautifully wrapped, deliciously named sorts. My son sent me a bar of Apple Crumble flavour along with his thesis for his doctorate, as thanks (in advance) for proofreading it. It really tastes of apple crumble, too. (Not that Germans have the slightest inkling what apple crumble is.)

Actually I have noticed people shying away from the oversweet stuff of recent years. We are reverting more and more to the original South American style of high chocolate content, less sweet taste.

Fraid I can't eat that - it turns my tummy over. And I don't like the taste. Give me a Celebration any day!

Even the real chocolate aficionados can't take 100% cacao. About 75% is just right for me.

Chocolate's about the only common theme to the current congruence of festivals, but it's interesting seeing all the hybrid activity.

Fireworks explode above the Inflatable-Homer-Simpson-as-Santa-Claus roof decorations as Asian children dress as ghosts and knock all the neighbours doors demading confectionery with menaces while their parents admire the candles in the pumpkin lanterns.

Think that sums it up.

I have a fairly relaxed attitude to most 'celebrations' religious and commercial. Generally I ignore them personally and accept other people's involvement secure in the certain knowledge that they are all going to burn in hell

I was expecting a quiz when I saw this.

reddit

You'll get quizzes.

Patience, Glasshopper

One thing the Isle of Wight doesn't have is a Chocolate Museum, but York does, and it even has an annual Chocolate Festival:
http://www.yorkfestivals.com/york-chocolate-festival1.html

(Potential h2g2 meet-up idea? York is on the mainland with a mainline railway station, close to international airports and has lots of stuff to do, including the National Railway Museum, city walls, Richard III museum, Jorvik etc, but on the other hand it is busy and expensive)

<BB<

I also try to avoid the majority of all these commercialised festavils... Its all just turned into a celibration of commercialism and over-indulgence... about the only one I regularly partake in is, beermas... err, I mean Christmas

I read a fascinating article about the history of chocolate a while back -- I think it was in the New Yorker. It was a Swiss who first discovered how to make milk chocolate. He patented it and refused to share the process, so the Hershey family had to figure out how to do it on their own. The American process involved souring the milk, and that's why American and European milk chocolate taste different.

I have lived and eaten milk chocolate in both America and England, and can confirm this.

I wondered why they were so different

Nonsense. Halloween isn't about body part shaped chocolate. It's about body part shaped gummy bear style sweeties. That squirt blood coloured goo. And orange cupcakes with spun sugar brains on them. Tch. Keep up.

Nonsense! Halloween is all about carving turnips!

Lovely that Diwali lights and bonfires coincide this year!

I've heard good things about green and blacks new lemon flavour....

You forgot a fest between Christmas and Easter (actually, 2 fests, though the second wouldn't be before Easter where I am) Valentine's Day and Mothering Sunday.

The Malteser Teaser is a thing of beauty, but it's been tainted somewhat by the fact you can now buy a bar of it. It was better when you had to root through a box of chocolates with your heart in your throat: is there one left?

Deb

Oh gosh, Malteaser Teasers. Those things are the biggest threat to my waistline since the popping candy Creations thingummies.