Bunnies come to the rescue as virus hits Belgian chocolatiers
SINT-PIETERS BRUGGE, Belgium — Master chocolatier Dominique Persoone stood forlorn on his huge workfloor, a faint smell of cocoa lingering amid the idle machinery — in a mere memory of better times.
Easter Sunday is normally the most important date on the chocolate makers’ calendar. But the coronavirus pandemic, with its lockdowns and social distancing, has struck a hard blow to the $5.5-billion industry that’s one of Belgium’s most emblematic.
“It’s going to be a disaster,” Persoone told The Associated Press through a medical mask. He closed his shops as a precautionary measure weeks ago, and says “a lot” of Belgium’s hundreds of chocolate-makers, from multinationals to village outlets, will face financial ruin.
For the coronavirus to hit is one thing, but to do it at Easter — when chocolate bunnies and eggs are seemingly everywhere — doubles the damage.
Yet amid the general gloom Belgians are allowing themselves some levity for the long Easter weekend.
Some producers, like Persoone’s famed The Chocolate Line, offer Easter eggs or bunnies in medical masks, while the country’s top virologist has jokingly granted a lockdown pass to the “essential” furry workers traditionally supposed to bring kids their Easter eggs.
For young and old here, Easter Sunday usually means egg hunts in gardens and parks, sticky brown fingers, the satisfying crack of an amputated chocolate rabbit’s ear before it disappears into a rapt child’s mouth.
“People love their chocolates, the Easter eggs, the filled eggs, the little figures we make,” said chocolatier Marleen Van Volsem in her Praleen shop in Halle, south of Brussels. “This is really something very big for us.”
The country has an annual per capita chocolate consumption of over 13 pounds, much of it scoffed during the peak Easter period.
“It is a really big season because if we don’t have this, then we won’t . . . be OK for the year,” Van Volsem said.
Persoone makes about 20 percent of his annual turnover in the single Easter week. This year, reduced to web sales and pick-ups out of his facility in western Belgium while his luxury shops in tourist cities Bruges and Antwerp are closed? “2 percent maybe, if we are lucky — not even.”
Guy Gallet, chief of Belgium’s chocolate federation, expects earnings to be greatly reduced across the board this year.
He said companies that sell mainly through supermarkets are doing relatively well but firms depending on sales in tourist locations, restaurants or airport shops “are badly hit.”
Persoone has a firm local base of customers but knows how tourists affect the books of so many chocolatiers.
“Of course, we won’t see Japanese people or Americans who come to Belgium for a holiday,” he said. “I am afraid if we do not get tourists anymore it will be a disaster, even in the future.”
The immediate challenge is to keep the Easter spirit — and the chocolatiers’ craft — alive in these trying times.
A big part is humor and the use of medical masks made of white chocolate is an obvious one. Persoone puts them on eggs.
“It is laughing with a hard thing. And on the other hand, we still have to keep fun, no? It is important to laugh in life.”
Genevieve Trepant of the Cocoatree chocolate shop in Lonzee, southeast of Brussels, couldn’t agree more. And like Persoone, who donated sanitary gel no longer needed in his factory to a local hospital, Trepant also thought of the needy.
That’s how the Lapinou Solidaire and its partner the Lapinou Confine — the Caring Bunny and the Quarantined Bunny, both adorned with a white mask — were born. Customers are encouraged to gift Trepant’s $13 bunnies to local medical staff to show their support. Part of the proceeds go to charity.
One of the country’s top coronavirus experts also knows the medical virtues of laughter. Professor Marc Van Ranst told Belgian children that their Easter treats weren’t at risk.
Tongue well in cheek, he told public broadcaster VRT that the government had deeply pondered the issue of delivery rabbits’ movements in these dangerous times. The rabbits bring — Santa-like — eggs to the gardens of children, roving all over Belgium at a time when it is forbidden for the public at large.
“The decision was unanimous: it is an essential profession. Even the police have been informed that they should not obstruct the Easter bunny in its work,” he said.
There was a proviso, though. “Rabbits will deliver to the homes of parents, not grandparents,” who are more at risk from COVID-19, Van Ranst said.
JERUSALEM — On the day set aside to mark Christ’s crucifixion, most churches stood empty. Streets normally filled with emotional processions were silent. St. Peter’s Square was almost deserted. And many religious sites in the Holy Land were closed.
Instead, Christians around the world commemorated Good Friday behind closed doors, seeking solace in online services and trying to uphold centuries-old traditions in a world locked down by the coronavirus pandemic.
Inside Jerusalem’s Church of the Holy Sepulcher, the chanting of a small group of clerics echoed faintly through the heavy wooden doors, as a few people kneeled outside to pray. In St. Peter’s Square, Pope Francis presided over a candle-lit procession, with nurses and doctors among those holding a torch.
The Jerusalem church, built on the site where Christians believe Jesus was crucified, buried and rose from the dead, is usually packed with pilgrims and tourists. But on Friday, four monks in brown robes and blue surgical masks prayed at the stations of the cross along the Via Dolorosa, the ancient route through the Old City where Jesus is believed to have carried the cross before his execution at the hands of the Romans. It runs past dozens of souvenir shops, cafes and hostels, nearly all of which are closed.
In any other year, tens of thousands of pilgrims from around the world retrace Jesus’ steps in the Holy Week leading up to Easter. But flights are grounded and most travel canceled as authorities try to prevent the spread of the virus.
James Joseph, a Christian pilgrim from Detroit dubbed “the Jesus guy” because he wears robes and goes about barefoot, lives near the Church of the Holy Sepulcher yearround. On Friday morning, he had the plaza outside to himself. He said Good Friday has special meaning this year.
“The crucifixion is the saddest thing possible, and he felt what we feel right now,” he said. “But thanks be to God . . . . He rose from the dead and changed the world on Easter.”
In Rome, the torch-lit Way of the Cross procession at the Colosseum is normally a highlight of Holy Week has been scrapped this year, along with all other public gatherings in Italy, which is battling one of the world’s worst outbreaks.
In the United States, the Good Friday fast typically observed by Catholics was taken up by some in other denominations as a means to connect more deeply with their faith during difficult times.
“The savior himself declared that certain things go not out but by prayer and fasting,” said Russell Nelson, president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, as he called for a worldwide day of fasting and prayer to help bring relief from the pandemic.
Archbishop Jose Gomez of Los Angeles, president of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, held a national prayer that was streamed online.
In Italy, the pope led a Good Friday ceremony where health care workers in white coats provided a stark reminder of how the virus outbreak has infused almost all walks of life.
Just a few dozen volunteer actors witnessed Latin America’s most famous re-enactment of the crucifixion Friday in Mexico City, capping a spectacle that in recent years had drawn about 2 million spectators. The detailed performance has played out in the borough of Iztapalapa since 1843, but was closed to the public for the first time in 177 years because of the virus. It was transmitted live so people could watch at home.
In Paris, a ceremony closed to the public was held in the charred and gutted interior of Notre Dame Cathedral, which was nearly destroyed by fire a year ago.
Archbishop Michel Aupetit and three other clergymen wore hard hats as they entered the damaged cathedral. Standing before a large cross and beneath a gaping hole in the roof, they sang, prayed and venerated a crown of thorns that survived the flames.
One American archbishop, Gregory Aymond of New Orleans, took to the skies in a gesture of devotion.
Aymond, who himself has recovered from the coronavirus, flew over the city in a World War II-era biplane and took with him holy water from the Jordan River where Christ was baptized to sprinkle over the city, and the Eucharist, to bless those the afflicted by the virus as well as first responders.
In the Philippines, where churchgoers were told to stay home, Josille Sabsal treated the moment as a test of faith. The 30-year-old Catholic missionary tried to replicate an altar in her Manila home by setting up a laptop, a crucifix and small statues of Jesus and the Virgin Mary on a table.
“I miss that moment in church when you say, ‘Peace be with you,’ to complete strangers and they smile back,” she said.
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