My favorite holiday begins next weekend. Passover!
1. And why is this holiday different from all the other holidays? It isn’t really. It’s the essence of all Jewish holidays: they almost killed us but then they didn’t.
2. Matzah, right? Heck, no. Try bringing a peanut butter and jelly on matzah sandwich to school in a brown paper bag and see what it looks like by lunchtime. I like matzah now, but I also recognize that Passover must be the bane of elementary school teachers in heavily Jewish areas. I can imagine no stickier time.
3. Is it because it is the one holiday when it is not only permitted to get hammered during dinner, but encouraged? A little. Watching my Aunt Bertha get sloshed was always entertaining.
4. Is it because once the adults are all hammered, they keep the kids busy by making them run around the house for an hour looking for a cracker, then when they find it tell them about it being symbolic of something or other because we’ve suffered so you should be so lucky run around such a nice house looking for a cracker. I have to go lie down.
No way. I love Passover because of Kosher for Passover Coke. Since corn syrup is chametz, Kosher for Passover Coke is made with sugar. Which makes it… old Coke! Like, the real old Coke, before Coke Classic and New Coke.*
Today was a great day. Scott came home with three two-liter bottles after some sales calls in Pikesville. We have plans to hoard a dozen or so bottles. So, I guess this is my PSA to my three or so readers: if you happen to miss disco-era Coca-cola, find a kosher grocery store in the next two weeks and look for two liter bottles of Coke with yellow tops. You’re in for a treat.
*Between 1980 or so and 1985, Coca-cola was gradually changing their formulation from sugar sweetened to corn syrup sweetened. It was done incrementally, and shortly after the change to corn syrup was complete, the New Coke debacle happened. It makes sense then, that many people insisted that Coke Classic wasn’t really old Coke, and never quite tasted the same. It didn’t, if people were expecting the sugar-sweetened Coke of their youths, and given the emotional attachment to the brand I suspect this is what gave rise to the many rumors about New Coke being everything from a marketing ploy to a cover for changing the formula.
