Xmas Candy

I still get a Christmas stocking. Yeah, that's right. If I get home for Xmas, there is a stocking full of candy goodies there for me. It's one of the joys of the season. Turns out you can go home again.

The thing I love about Xmas candy is the themed packaging, especially of chocolate morsels. Sure, it is good to get some good chocolate-- Dove's, Cadbury, Lindt, etc. -- but it is also nice to get some of the absurdly foil-wrapped chocolates made for the holidays. Oh, it's not very tasty-- usually chalky and stale-- but there is something about it that screams "Christmas." To cite a couple of Marxists, there is a "ruthless unity" to it all, in aesthetics and flavor... but not in the pernicious sense. Of course, there's the standard Santa and reindeer types, and there are always Hershey's and Reese's bells. But I especially like the other themed candies that are not really Xmas related, but that also appear around Christmas time.

This is the standard Santa fare. We've all had it.

For instance, this year, I got a golf ball. It was not particularly flavorful (though the white cream in the middle was pretty solid) but it was the exact size of a golf ball, and it even had a standard set of dimples. I have also in the past gotten footballs and tennis rackets. Such gendered candy theming makes me wonder if there is a set of feminine candies and what they would be? Do girls get little chocolates that reflect what marketers think they like? My Little Chocolate Ponies? Barbie Bittersweets? It's not a burning question in my mind, but something to think about.

The golf ball I got was not this fancy and had the ubiquitous foil wrapper on it-- and on the wrapper was a landscape of someone playing golf. Brilliant.

I am just happy that my step-mom still thinks of little things like how I play golf and makes the stocking reflect that. It sure helps me keep up the whimsy. I'll be expecting that stocking every year until I die, and I hope my expectations are not dashed.