If old poems and carols are to be believed, Christmas is
supposed to taste like sugar plums, figgy pudding and wassail (the last apparently
obtained via an act called “wassailing” which - at least in the song - sounds vaguely like
extortion). Well, I’ve never had any of those foods. To me Christmas tastes like chocolate
covered cherries and chocolate covered peanuts.
Better known as “cordial cherries” the chocolate covered
cherry is a delicious chocolate lump candy with a whole, real, pitted cherry
swimming in a sugar and cherry juice liquid center. Your best approach is to eat them in a single bite and enjoy the cherry explosion. The chocolate-cherry combo is one of the best flavor mixes in the world.
Chocolate covered peanuts are just what the name implies.
Sometimes sold in clusters, the kind that say “Christmas” to me are individual
and double dipped giving you a high chocolate-to-peanut ratio.
My grandpa and then my dad loved the cherry cordials and my
mom always had the chocolate covered peanuts on Christmas so I did too and do
to this day. I literally don’t remember a Christmas without them. Other candies
have come and gone but those two have become a Sullivan family tradition.
There are years in which I don’t hear anyone singing about
Good King Wenceslas or Frosty the Snowman. There are years in which I don’t see
Charlie Brown decorate a scrawny little tree or Rudolph exclaim that, “She
thinks I’m cude!” There are even years in which I don’t get to come home and
see my family for the holiday. But when I eat a handful of chocolate covered
peanuts or bite down on a chocolate covered cherry the Christmas spirit comes rushing
right in. Sometimes candy isn’t candy. Sometimes it’s pure Christmas magic.
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Merry Christmas to all and to all a good night!
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