I ask you, how far wrong can you go with a hot cross bun, a Good Friday treat decorated with a cross to represent the crucifixion of Jesus Christ? Very wrong indeed. Standing in the queue at a local grocery store, several of us reeled from the abomination that is a White Chocolate & Lemon Hot Cross Bun.
Hot check buns. Really.
Yeuch.
When another customer mentioned Strawberries and Clotted Cream Hot Cross Buns from a rival supermarket I swear something in me died.
Then came actual sacrilege. The UK grocery chain Iceland launched a hot cross bun with a tick instead of the traditional Christian symbol. “When I survey the wondrous tick.” Doesn’t have quite the same ring, does it?
These Frankensteins of Easter tradition are getting more and more monstrous. In Australia, Coles’ Vegemite and Cheese variant unleashed a torrent of “Not Cross Buns”. Pizza Shapes Hot Cross Buns, an orange burger bun with cheese and paprika (possibly less delicious than it sounds), Sticky Date Hot Cross Pudding Bun and even Hot Cross Bun Porridge.
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The torture it neverendeth. Yesterday, my friend Maggie texted from the grocery store. “Brace yourself. Hot Cross Bunnetone.” Hopping mad, I tell you.
Iceland Foods claims that a fifth of customers prefer their Easter buns to have a tick instead of a cross. So what? Drooling idiots might prefer Kim Kardashian in a thong to the Virgin Mary with the baby Jesus, but Kimmie is not yet the widely accepted symbol of Christmas, thank God.
The point of tradition is reassuring sameness, I reckon, delighting in doing the things our forebears did, not indulging an unappeasable hunger for pointless novelty.