christmas genitalia

My mom gave us an advent calendar at Thankgiving and we've been faithfully eating our way through it. Every day offers up a little chocolate treat with a raised holidayish design of some sort. So far there have been Christmassy things like a snowman, a candle and a wreath, as well as some ambiguous items like a four-leaf clover, a moon wearing a hat and a squirrel holding an enormous nut. I don't really mind the weird ones. After all, I'd be hard pressed to come up with 25 Christmas-related pictures that would be appropriate. However, one day has troubled us: December 7th. This is its chocolate piece:

Unfortunately, in a fit of petulant rage, Blogger refuses to display my picture right side up. Therefore, for clarification I've included a photo of the chocolate's window:

Sweet Baby Jesus—is that thing circumcised?

It was not immediately clear to us what the picture depicted and no matter how long and hard we stared at it, we couldn't shake the impression that it was some sort of double-penis. This confused us, for as far as we knew, penises are not traditional Christmas decorations/ gifts/ personnages. No real harm done, though. Being the dedicated chocolate consumer that I am, I didn’t let a little Christmas-sexification ruin my good time. And it was delicious—just like that squirrel.

You think that’s it, don’t you? You think I only have one example of Christmas genitalia. Well, you’re wrong. I’ve been studying for the GRE and I know that at least two examples are needed for the essay portion of the exam, so I’ve come prepared.

Example #2: A friend of mine just returned from Paris, where she happily ate her way from monument to crêpe stand to pastry shop, and kindly brought me back a Christmas present: a petit cochon. This particular pastry holds fond memories for me. Nearly every Saturday during the six months we lived in Paris, I would select this delicious treat as my weekly pastry ration. The oblong chocolate cake is soaked in alcoholic goodness and wrapped in pink marzipan, which is styled in the shape of a pig, complete with a tiny twisty tail, ears and snout. The snout was my favorite because it is a chunk of pure marzipan. I always ate it last. Thus, you can appreciate how very happy I was when my friend handed the pastry box over:

Petits cochons! How divine! How delicious! How…strangely shaped. The heads aren’t quite how I remembered them. In my day they looked more like pig heads and less like labia (or “flip-flop-flablay-blia” as my friend calls them) but whatever. They’re still magically delicious! I mean, most holiday meals are centered around eating mashed spiced bread out of a giant bird’s ass-crack, and that's never bothered me. I’m French, dammit—I can eat anything! Whether it be mutant penis-shaped chocolates, cake-filled marzipan vulvas, or donkey sausage. But that’s a story and picture for another day.

Merry Christmas, everyone!