I don't get the connection between Baby Ruths and Easter.

How on earth did M&M Mars and Nestle get in on the Easter thing? How about Jellybeans or Skittles? What's that all about? Do you know that I actually saw a chocolate cross packaged in cellophane and cardboard in the Easter basket section at our favorite big-box retailer yesterday? A cross! The symbol of the most painful, heartless, cruel death man has ever concocted. I wonder if there was a smaller package of chocolate marshmallow nails near the cross. Jesus has to be puzzled, and more than a little disappointed.

Without getting too preachy or sounding like a thumper, Easter is a miracle. It's a gift. It was born of the most selfless love ever known, and it involved pain, humiliation and a horrible, protracted death. So of course, we make a chocolate cross to commemorate the occasion.

I am just as guilty as anyone else of propagating the chocolate/Easter connection. I absolutely love creating beautiful Easter baskets for everyone in my family, including my husband and grown children. I guess I always will. I suppose somewhere along the way Man, in all his wisdom and self indulgence, figured that chocolate makes everything better, more palatable if you will.

Today is Good Friday. I never understood that name, all things considered. But even more importantly, Sunday is Easter. Chocolate bunnies everywhere will get eaten one ear at a time. Millions of jellybeans will be devoured, and truckloads of eggs will be colored, deviled and consumed. Hopefully, during all the hullabaloo, we will each pause and consider what all this is really about.

And to the guy who thought up the chocolate cross, I dunno dude. Seems in awfully bad taste to me.