Colm O'Regan: Mince pie flavoured biscuits? NO!
There was nothing to indicate how sinister the turn of events would be. It was just a normal shop. A lovely little shop, a pleasing throwback to the days when there wasn’t too much choice in the shops. The shelves weren’t integrated modular retail solutions provided by an integrated modular retail solutions provider. They were just shelves. I was in the mood for biscuits.
They had three types of biscuits. One plain, two chocolate. Given the year we’ve had and that it was a Monday, it was going to be chocolate. One packet had a suspicious green tinge. I checked in case it was a stealth-mint situation. (Minty flavours are fine if it’s on purpose but you don’t want to be surprised by mint.) ‘Plum pudding flavour’ said the wrapper. That was a lucky escape. I chose the other. Its colour scheme seemed normal and chocolatey. I didn’t read the label. You can hear the doomy music starting as you read this.
I got them home. Just like the early days of a relationship, those first few biscuits are exciting. You can’t wait to get your hands on them. The packet was ripped open with abandon. I ate the first biscuit eaten the country way with the first mouthfuls followed immediately by a slurp of tea in the gob during the chewing of the biscuit.
They tasted wrong. I tried another one. Still off. Three, four, five biscuits. No change. I trusted the biscuits more than I trust my own sense of taste so I was all set to book a PCR.
For the first time, I looked at the packet properly. They were minced pie flavour. Mince EFFING Pie. On a chocolate biscuit.
I don’t want to diss the people who made them. We all sell food we’re not proud of. I once spent an afternoon wiping the soot off smoke-damaged bottles of out-of-date Mi Wadi. But we love that stuff in Cork. And just because we can do something, doesn’t mean we should.
It’s part of the overwhelming effort to brand EVERYTHING to make it more Christmassy. But you don’t need to make chocolate biscuits ‘festive’ or ‘seasonal’. It’s like making Santa wear a Christmas jumper. He’s Santa. He doesn't need an extra XXL Fabrique en Vietnam with bells on.
Some combos make no sense. Our dishwasher tablets have been labelled as seasonal since October, so that our innards and the sea can feel chemical-festive. Lots of cleaning products are Christmas scented. Christmas should smell of cleaning products, of Jeyes fluid and bleach. But not stuffing-flavoured bleach. That combination could smell like the aftermath of an incident in a restaurant involving a child who had too much rich food.
It’s not just Christmassifcation but also the urge to combine two popular things in one weird or uneasy messing-with-nature hybrid. Tayto and Dairymilk (never forget), pens with digital watches, Boyzlife. We love different things for different reasons. You wouldn’t combine Joy Division with Joe Dolan. I think both were great but I wouldn’t have wanted Mullingar’s finest swaggering his hips to Love Will Tear Us Apart.
All of this is going on while the true meaning of Christmas – learning to live with family– is lost. You see that in the way unpopular chocolates have been dropped from beloved collections. Coffee Cremes scapegoated. They had their place. Some people loved them. But the chocolate box unions smashed by the neoliberal tyranny of majority rule.
Coffee Cremes are what family is all about. There are some you don’t like that much but we support one another and often when there’s no one left, you rely on them to get through early days of January.
Happy Christmas. Please enjoy your chocolate biscuits and mince pies responsibly. Separately.
