Sorry, Aldi – the last thing I want for Christmas is a ‘Chreaster egg’

The budget supermarket’s new ‘festive’ confectionary mash-up is baffling, says Clair Woodward – because who needs chocolate eggs to celebrate the birth of Jesus when you’ve got Quality Street green triangles?

I was leaving a coffee shop a week ago when I spotted a large, white-painted branch on a side table. It was festooned with white lights and dangling ornaments, and I made my usual comment when I see things like this in October: “It’s too early to put up a Christmas tree!”

Then, I realised it wasn’t a Christmas tree at all, but a “Halloween tree”, decorated with spray-on cobwebs and pound-shop plastic tat that will be washing up on a tropical beach in a couple of years.

You can, then, imagine my reaction when I saw that Aldi is now selling “Chreaster” eggs – hollow, chocolate, foil-wrapped eggs (red foil for Garry the Gingerbread Man, blue for Parker the Penguin…) to “delight” the kiddies over the festive period.

It’s an unexpected salvo in the supermarket’s battle to celebrate the birth of Jesus, in competition with every other retailer who has spent the rest of the year coming up with novel ideas for their food ranges, whose development features in God knows how many Channel 4 and Channel 5 shows.

I can’t help but feel that Jesus would be a bit disappointed if he found out that eggs were being used to celebrate both his resurrection and his birth. It doesn’t seem very special to have the major events in your life (and afterlife) commemorated in exactly the same way.

Eggs are a symbol of rebirth, and while, I suppose, at a stretch, they could be the symbol of birth, too, I think it’s nice to have special things to celebrate special times.

If the food team at Aldi can come up with Specially Selected Breaded Chicken Doughnuts (“breaded chicken with waffle sprinkles and barbecue sauce”) for a new starter this Christmas, could they not think of something novel in the confectionary department. Who’s for Cuthbert the Caterpillar dragged up as the Virgin Mary?

Like buying fruit and veg, we seem to have forgotten about seasonality. I changed my buying habits recently when I realised that my breakfast blueberries were being air-freighted in from Peru. I also felt hot and cross when I realised that what used to be sold as a plain spiced fruit bun is now sold year round with a cross on it. This is just wrong, even for an atheist like me.

When I was little, back in the Seventies, hot cross buns used to be bought once a year, and as they emerged from the baker’s paper bag, I’d have my small person’s annual religious debate, asking myself why Jesus was born in December but died in March or April, and did that mean he grew up really, really fast? Even now, when theology clearly isn’t my thing, I think it’s nice to have things at a set time to mark the passing of the year; it’s also nice not to have to think about Jesus’s agonies on the cross all year round.

Instead of mashing-up existing special days, maybe the supermarkets should be coming up with new lines for them. They could do chocolate Maundy money in a little net so we could pretend to be the King dishing it out on Maundy Thursday, or a range of disappointing cocktails in a tin for August Bank Holiday, to be drunk in the rain at a damp barbecue. Or how about a special Boxing Day ready meal that tastes of turkey, stuffing and disappointment, to be eaten over a row with your partner?

The possibilities to start new food traditions are endless… but in the meantime, you’ll find me at Christmas hovering over the Quality Street and moaning that there aren’t enough green triangles.