Monster Munchin’ on Easter Sunday

Monster Munchin’ on Easter Sunday


Christmas Day and Easter Sunday have always been big days in our house.
And the religious connection is quite incidental.
The birth and the death of Jesus Christ would be acknowledged alright. But the excitement among the three kids would be for altogether more selfish reasons.
Christmas meant presents from Santa Claus and Easter, in our house, was the end of Lent.
We had taken a massive sacrifice for 40 long days and forty long nights. We weren’t found wanting. No chocolate, no sweets, no crisps, no ice-cream and no fizzy drinks.
And how it used to test us. Myself and my two older sisters normally get on fine. But during Lent all bets were off.
In one particular display of cruelty my then 16-year-old sister banished me from the room because she was watching a film rated ‘12’. I was eleven at the time.
More amazingly I actually left the room. But not before calling her every name under the sun. Religious sacrifice, how are ya?
We were like drug addicts gone cold turkey and our parents must have wondered was it worth it.
But come Easter Sunday, all was right with the world again. We didn’t eat any banned products during Lent but we weren’t prohibited from buying them.
So we would build up a nice little stockpile. Fizzy cola bottles, Monster Munch, Yorkie’s and Dairy Mil’s made up the most of my stash and come Easter Sunday, they became my  breakfast, lunch and dinner.
I’m sure it would have been healthier to eat them in a considered fashion over 40 days rather making a pig of myself on Easter Sunday. And hindsight is only of any use if you draw on it.
Every Easter I would eat until I was sick and then cry why. I’d tell myself ‘never again’ and do the very same thing the following year. The stupidity of youth.
This year I went cold turkey again. But my willpower isn’t what it was. A game of cards in Colm Jordan’s broke me.
A box with about 100 bars in it was produced from the fridge. Everyone else had one so it would have been rude not to join them. Twas probably rude eating five of them but no one commented out loud about the sloth.
That was with two weeks to go. I kept ‘dry’ from then until Good Friday. But on the same day that I ate meat lasagne for dinner, I broke all the rules. The ice-cream looked lonely.
But I stayed off everything the following day. Wasn’t I mighty?
So cometh Easter Sunday, cometh the splurge. I had no stockpile this year – temptation would get the better of me after a day. So it was into SeΡn Mulroy’s with €7 and go mad.
Monster Munch, a Drifter and a pack of strawberry Chewits were the A class treats. And, lo and behold, I was sick afterwards. Never again.