It’s now Passover, and we’ve just finished celebrating the first day of our beloved 7 day (8 days outside of Israel) holiday. Though we eat matzo to remind us of our liberation from slavery in Egypt, we also happen to love it! The hand-made round matzos that we generally eat, arrive in very large boxes, since the matzos themselves are about 14 inches wide, much larger than the machine-made square matzos that most people recognize (and that my daughter is eating in this photo taken 6 years ago.) One of the pre-Passover activities that my kids enjoy every year, is a visit to a local hand-made matzo factory to witness the process of making the matzos which amazingly enough must be done within a time period of 18 minutes from start to finish!
And now, I’ll get to the point of this post. It just so happens that the majority of Israelis don’t share my concern for healthy eating and give lots of sugar filled un-healthy fare to their kids on a regular and sometimes daily basis. In order so that my kids wouldn’t feel deprived of these foods that their friends unfortunately eat all the time, I decided that we’d eat these foods on the holidays, with each holiday having its special treat. On Rosh HaShanah we have chocolate milk, on Succos we have honey cookies, on Hanukkah we have chocolate, on Purim we have junk food that the kids receive from friends, on Passover we have chocolate spread, and on Shavuous we have diary pudding (the kind that come in yogurt-like containers, and are very popular in Israel.) One of the funniest statements that I remember from my five year old happened last Rosh HaShana. He saw one of his friends eating a pudding for breakfast and he came to me and said very emphatically: “Mommy, Yaakov is eating pudding, doesn’t he know that it’s Rosh HaShana?” (And he therefore should be drinking chocolate milk, not eating the treat for Shavuos, got it?)
I am very happy to say, that this little plan of mine has worked amazingly well, and my kids never beg for these foods! Tonight we opened the first container of chocolate spread, and my daughter said about the neighbors “oh those poor things, they don’t get to enjoy chocolate spread on Passover since they eat it all year!”
Every holiday is a wonderful opportunity to build family traditions, and I wish you all a wonderful Passover!
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