Peel Back the Chocolate Santa Wrapping and What Do You Get? The Easter Bunny!

There’s been a great set of photos doing the rounds the past few years around Christmas showing up just how cheapskate some chocolate companies are during the festive season.

Take a look:

There you have it. Sprung!  A chocolate Santa just in time for Christmas. But no!  Peel back the Santa Claus aluminium foil and what do we have? A chocolate Easter Bunny grinning out as in his his leery manner,  that’s what!

I mean, it’s like they don’t even bother any more! Which they don’t. Who do these chocolate companies think they are? At one level it’s simply another proof of the soulless global conglomerates that offer us products pretending that they care, but they really don’t.

But there’s another way of looking at it for us this Christmas too. Because, as usual, lost in the whole glitzy foil wrapper of what has become modern day Christmas in the West is this truth:

Peel back Christmas and you get Easter

It’s true. The Christmas message, when it’s unwrapped, gives you Easter. The birth of Jesus is barrelling headlong towards his death. In fact that’s the point of the gospel story. It’s even hinted at – more than hinted at – in the immediate post-birth narrative of Luke’s Gospel.

Mary and Joseph take Jesus to the temple to fulfil the Law’s command to present the first newborn male to God, and to offer the purification sacrifice for Mary following Jesus’ birth.

And the aged Simeon, who were are told goes into the temple at the behest of the Holy Spirit, and who has been promised by God that he will not die until he sees the LORD’s Messiah, takes Jesus in his arms and says this of him:

This child is destined to cause the falling and rising of many in Israel, and to be a sign that will be spoken against, so that the thoughts of many hearts will be revealed. And a sword will pierce your own soul too. (Luke 2:34-35).

A divisive child. A child who will cause many to fall and many to rise. A child who will reveal the human heart.  Those are heavy enough words. But it’s that final statement that must have set Mary on edge: a sword to pierce her own soul.

I dunno!  If I were Mary And Joseph I would have mixed feelings about what has just been said by Simeon. It’s a bit like someone saying “Congratulations on your baby. Gee, all babies have that ugly look about them don’t they?”

Mind you, my mum tells me that when my twin brother and I were born in Northern Ireland, my rather crochety Brethren preacher great-grandfather, took us in his arms and said to mum “Congratulations, two more little sinners born into the world!” 

Thanks Barnabas!  Son of encouragement.  Although, the evidence is in these past 57 years: he was right. And mum has told that story ad nauseam for nearly six decades.

Yet that reality is exactly why we have that statement from Simeon.  Jesus is the only little one born into the world without the nature of sin upon him that will soon exhibit itself with the stains of sin.

Mary’s soul will be pierced ultimately because this newborn son of hers will be pierced. Pierced on the cross for the sin of the world.

Which parent can stand the thought of their child being mocked and scorned at school? How about seeing him mocked and scorned, beaten, stripped and crucified before your very eyes? A true piercing indeed.

So right there at Christmas we get Easter, not least of all in Simeon’s words.

Which kinda makes sense of the Chocolate Santa. Peel back the glitzy alfoil and you get the Easter Bunny. Peel back Christmas and you get Easter.

Now, chocolate companies of the world, do better this year!