On Childhood, Chocolate and Christmas
Part One of a chocolatey deep dive (from which I haven't yet come up for air)
Do you ever find yourself looking up from your phone to realize that you just spent half an hour researching the identity and family history of the non-celeb ex-girlfriend of a famous person you had a crush on when you were 13? And now you’re reading the “healthy Shamrock Shake recipe” on her Instagram, which turns out to be an avocado smoothie made with mint extract, sweetened with (what else?!) medjool dates?
Or the difference between Shaker and Mission furniture, and how Shakers managed to become one of the most enduring religious sects in American history in spite of the fact that they were celibate and didn’t believe in procreation. Before you know it, you’re knee-deep in the Arts & Crafts movement and wondering which spot in your house would be best for a William Morris wallpaper accent wall?
It happens to me all the time.
The other week, a friend posted on Facebook about her disappointment that the wrappers in a tin of Quality Street candies were no longer shiny. Instead of the crinkly, twinkly wrappers she expected to see, the tin was filled with significantly less glossy paper wrappers.
“Why did they change it?” I wondered, and this question led me down a deep rabbit hole that I am still digging myself out of. Consider this week’s Substack a mere teaser. A chocolatey amuse-bouche for next week’s deep dive into a Willy Wonka world of heroes and villains who battled across continents and centuries for candy supremacy. Spoiler alert: unfettered capitalism was, ultimately, the winner.
Let’s rewind a bit. Quality Street was indeed the quintessential holiday treat of my childhood, but it wasn’t my favourite chocolate overall. That honour belonged to the plainest, purest Cadbury Dairy Milk bar, the ur-chocolate I’ve loved since I was six or seven. Maybe this is what the momstagrammers mean when they post about core memories? Have I had better chocolate since? Sure. But that taste, linked forever with joyous childhood trips to England, is my Platonic ideal.
An aside: In the mid 2010s, Colin and I moved into a house on Gladstone Avenue in Toronto, between College and Dundas, a location notable only because it is directly across the street from Toronto’s Cadbury factory, an unassuming old building that looks sort of like a big high school, but with a lot of massive transport trucks parked in the lot.
Every Halloween, the Cadbury factory transforms their loading bay into a mini haunted house. People line up for hours to pass through it and receive, at the exit, a 5lb (at least) bag of candy. As thanks for putting up with the constant truck traffic, neighbours across from the factory get VIP tickets to bypass the blocks-long lineup. When Colin and I went through with our infant son one year, we walked out with three massive bags of candy - one for each human who walked through the gates, even though one was clearly too young for solid foods. They were good neighbours. I don’t miss much about living down there, but I do miss the sweet, chocolately smell that coated the whole street.
My parents lived in the UK before I was born, and picked up a lot of British habits and tastes. They also made many friends there, so during the Euro portion of my childhood, we visited often. I loved Enid Blyton books, Monty Python, and, of course, British chocolates.
For a kid who grew up in communist Yugoslavia, Christmas was very exotic. We did decorate a tree in December, but it was a New Year’s tree, and that’s also when we exchanged gifts. There was no talk about a special baby. The existence of Jesus barely penetrated my consciousness.
Our British friends did things like hang stockings in front of a fireplace (we lived in an apartment) and hide coins in a steamed fruitcake. They got tins of fancy chocolates, too. So many curious, delightful traditions that I was desperate to adopt.
It was during childhood winter visits to the UK, when we looked at the Christmas displays in the lit-up windows of Harrods in London, and visited friends in cute small towns (where I saw thatched roofs for the first time1!), that I truly fell in love with British sweets. Especially Quality Street, and especially at Christmastime. My favourites are the plain ones, like the green chocolate triangle. My mom loved the toffee penny, as does my kid. Add it to the list of ways he reminds me of her.
When my friend posted about the fact that they changed their wrappers, my righteous indignation flared. Why are these corporations always messing with my nostalgia?
And there I stumbled upon a rabbit hole, and there I tumbled down it.
According to the Quality Street website, the change was made for sustainability reasons:
Quality Street® has always been famous for its bright and colourful packaging - and we are returning to our roots, introducing paper wrappers similar to those which appeared in the first selection in 1936!
Now, you’ll be able to pop your new Quality Street® wrappers into household recycling once you’ve enjoyed your delicious sweets. What’s more, by moving from two layers to a single paper wrap, we’ll remove two billion pieces of packaging material by 2023 and rest assured, all your favourites inside remain unchanged!
Okay, fair enough. I dug a bit deeper and found a press release on the Nestlé site (Quality Street is now owned by Nestlé, arguably the most hated corporation of my lifetime, but more on that next week) that proudly proclaims the chocolates have been produced in Halifax, West Yorkshire, UK since 1936, in a zero-waste-to-landfill facility that uses sustainably sourced milk (since 2003) and cocoa (since 2015).
It turns out that Nestlé bought Quality Street in 1988, the year my family moved to Canada. I looked up Cadbury too, and found out they were bought by Kraft in 2010.
How did all the massively successful British chocolate companies I loved end up owned by foreign conglomerates, and who owned them before? Who invented these chocolates of my childhood? Who made the first chocolate bar, and when?
And how, and who, and when, and why?
Colin is tired of the multitude of chocolate-history-facts I’ve unleashed on him over the past couple of weeks, and can hardly wait for me to unleash them on you. But, truth be told, I’m only halfway through my research. Come back in a week to peel back the wrapper on British chocolate’s fascinating history, which I’m currently in the process of grinding, mixing, and tempering into my next Substack.
In the meantime, tell me about your favourite seasonal treats, or better yet, share recipes for homemade ones. Christian-holiday-associations very much not mandatory!
Do you follow @thethatchingguy on IG? 10/10 content.
My favourite chocolate bar will always be Snickers. I have fond memories of buying one in school and taking bites in between classes just so I could savour the taste longer.
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