No, Cadbury Didn’t Take The Word “Easter” Off All Their Easter Eggs To Be Politically Correct

Like many religious holidays, Easter in Australia is heavy on traditions — day drinking, barely tolerating extended family, stuffing yourself so full of cheap off-brand chocolate it feels like you’re about to die. In recent years, though, Easter and Christmas have developed an exciting new tradition: people freaking out about the non-existent threat of political correctness.

Spurred on by nontroversies like the Starbucks red holiday cup and Fox News having yearly conniptions about an apparent ‘War on Christmas’ in the US, every religious holiday now comes with its own ready-made storm in a teacup, courtesy of people who’ve seemingly never heard of the myriad more important problems the world’s facing at the moment. Cadbury’s Facebook page has been flooded with comments accusing the chocolate giant of intentionally removing the word ‘Easter’ from the packaging, presumably to appease the politically correct hordes who like the holiday enough to buy Easter eggs but are offended by it enough to demand that they be called something else.

In case it wasn’t weird and depressing enough already, a number of comments mention the so-called ‘movement’ to have halal certification removed from food packaging, on the grounds that a small symbol letting practising Muslims know something’s fine for them to eat is evidence of a global conspiracy to turn our kids into burqas or something.

Even Queensland Senator Glenn Lazarus is getting in on the action, posting a rage-filled tirade on Facebook over the weekend accusing Cadbury of “tak[ing] the word ‘Easter’ off its entire collection of Easter eggs” and directing people to the Cadbury Facebook page to express their dissatisfaction.

The only problem for Lazarus and co., besides the much larger one of having nothing better to do with their time, is that Cadbury hasn’t taken the word ‘Easter’ off its packaging at all. As Cadbury has been patiently pointing out for a while now, the word ‘Easter’ still appears on the back of all its chocolate egg, bunny, bilby and similar products. That is, when it’s not slapped on the front of them.

While it is true that the word ‘Easter’ isn’t displayed on some items as prominently as it may have been in the past, this could well be a financial decision more than anything else; chocolates not explicitly marked as ‘Easter eggs’ have a longer marketing shelf-life than ones that do, and are less likely to be subject to severely discounted post-holiday sales.

Lazarus has since deleted that post, but not before an enterprising reader snagged some screenshots. Liberal MP Craig Kelly seemingly hasn’t gotten the memo, going on a lengthy Facebook rant last night about “confectionary companies bowing down to politically correctness [sic] … a tyranny that destroying [sic] our society”. If his priorities are in order presumably he’s got a novel-length screed about the unprecedented bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in the works, but don’t hold your breath.