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Having spent much of my youth singing in church choirs, I can honestly say that Easter is my favourite religious festival. Some of the music traditionally performed at this time of the year is unutterably beautiful and a joy whether you are singing it or hearing it. It’s also an excuse to eat excessive quantities of chocolate, although the prize for sheer excess this year has to go to the Domino’s pizza chain which has introduced a dessert comprising a cookie stuffed with a whole creme egg. You had to read that twice didn’t you.
But doctors will tell you that chocolate – dark, taken in modest quantities – is actually good for your health (they said the same about red wine, but I’ve always found that – like chocolate – it’s the modest quantities bit that presents the challenge). But 20 or 30 grams of good quality dark chocolate will not only cheer you up, it’ll be good for your heart, could help reduce blood pressure and is associated with a host of other positive health outcomes. Go on,
treat yourself.
Chocolate is also notoriously associated with environmental and ethical problems via its links to child slavery and deforestation. Happily there are a few brands these days which have rightly made a virtue out of ensuring they are free of these problems. But the problem is that their products tend to be more expensive than those from manufacturers less determined to avoid harmful practices. So take your doctor’s advice, enjoy a little chocolate, and make sure
it’s made with responsibly sourced cocoa if you can.
It’s hard to imagine that there’d have been much chocolate around in biblical times, Which is probably why Jesus is always depicted as having an enviably toned physique. And representations of Christ as an idealised version of masculinity have influenced religious thinking down the ages (and vice versa).
This week we have also considered the health benefits of honey – especially when it comes to coping with hay fever symptoms. We also learned that flushing your nasal passages out with water to combat hay fever is a risky business,
unless you take care to sterilise the water. And it was gratifying to discover that being immersed in nature really does make time seem to go slower.
Our colleagues and friends across our global network have also treated us to a smorgasbord of Easter-related scholarship. From the US we learned where the Christian belief in Jesus’s resurrection would have come from, while from a theologian from New Zealand we read that while biblical depictions of Jesus on the cross have him in a loincloth, the brutal truth is he would have been naked. And from Australia we learned what it means to walk the Stations of the Cross and why some people still perform the ritual today.
As ever, try to make time this long weekend to listen to our podcast, The Conversation Weekly. This week’s episode looks into the unseen boundaries that divide up the world, from the 8-Mile Road in Detroit, which separates the city along racial lines to the Wallace line, which marks a sharp transition in flora and fauna between Asia and Australia.
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