{"id":151,"date":"2014-04-12T08:46:29","date_gmt":"2014-04-12T08:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/?p=151"},"modified":"2014-04-12T08:46:29","modified_gmt":"2014-04-12T08:46:29","slug":"the-easter-mystery","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/2014\/04\/12\/the-easter-mystery\/","title":{"rendered":"The Easter Mystery"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the last few years, the Meaningful Chocolate Company<\/em> has been selling what it calls the Real Easter Egg<\/em>.\u00a0 There are a number of features of this egg that set it apart from the others on the market.\u00a0 First of all, it\u2019s made with FairTrade chocolate.\u00a0 This means that the people who grow the cocoa beans are being paid a fair wage for their labour.\u00a0 Furthermore, their communities are being helped because the proceeds of a small premium added to the price of each egg are spent on a community project like a school or a well.\u00a0 There are other FairTrade eggs, of course, but this is a good selling point for anyone with a conscience.<\/p>\n

Secondly, a percentage of the profit is given to charity.\u00a0 This is very rare, if not completely unique.\u00a0 From egg sales since 2011, the company has donated over \u00a340,000 to different worthy causes.\u00a0 For a start, there are regular gifts to Traidcraft Exchange<\/em>, a development charity which helps small-scale farmers and producers all over the world.\u00a0 In addition to this, money has been given to Baby Lifeline<\/em>, The Leprosy Mission<\/em>, and Christians Against Poverty<\/em>.\u00a0 This latter organisation is a national charity working across the UK to lift people out of debt and poverty, offering free debt counselling through a network of 252 debt centres based in local churches.\u00a0 You might like to know that Christ Church Ware is one of those churches \u2013 help really is \u201cat hand\u201d in these financially troubling times.\u00a0 Buying a Real Easter Egg<\/em> really does produce all kinds of ripples of good in this country and overseas.<\/p>\n

But the third aspect is what makes this egg the Real<\/strong> Easter Egg; it has the Easter story on or in the box.\u00a0 The company\u2019s founder wrote recently, \u201cWhen we first revealed the Real Easter Egg, I was asked by a journalist, \u2018What’s Easter got to do with the church?’ I had to explain that Easter is in fact a religious festival and not owned by Cadbury!\u00a0 This year, The Real Easter Egg radio advert was rejected by the radio authority.\u00a0 They seemed unsure if Easter was Christian and so wanted our advert to say that our eggs had a copy of the ‘Easter Christian story’ in the box.\u00a0 We argued the point and they have decided that, \u2018on balance’, Easter is<\/span> a well-known Christian festival.\u201d\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

But it\u2019s less well known than it was.\u00a0 In March 2005, the Daily Mail reported that just 48% of British people questioned said that Easter was about the Resurrection of Christ.\u00a0 Two years later, on 3rd April 2007, a press release from Somerfield supermarket declared, \u201cBrits will on average be enjoying over 3.5 eggs each over the Easter weekend alone.\u00a0 But over a quarter don\u2019t know why handing them out symbolises the birth<\/span> of Jesus\u2026\u201d<\/em> (My emphasis)\u00a0 This was later corrected to read ‘the rebirth’ of Christ, and then, after consultation with the Church of England, a third version correctly identified that Easter celebrated the resurrection<\/span> of Christ from the dead.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s no doubt about it; ignorance of the world-changing story of Jesus\u2019 death and resurrection is increasing in what has historically been recognised as a Christian country.\u00a0 Will you be celebrating it this year?\u00a0 What example does your practice set to your children and grandchildren?\u00a0 There are plenty of church events, and everyone is most welcome\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the last few years, the Meaningful Chocolate Company has been selling what it calls the Real Easter Egg.\u00a0 There are a number of features of this egg that set it apart from the others on the market.\u00a0 First of all, it\u2019s made with FairTrade chocolate.\u00a0 This means that the people who grow the cocoa […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,3,34],"tags":[43,25,16,49,39,14],"class_list":["post-151","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-comment","category-fairtrade","category-family-life","tag-charity","tag-consumerism","tag-easter","tag-fairtrade","tag-family","tag-resurrection"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":153,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151\/revisions\/153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}