Sunday, April 12, 2009

Easter econ lessons

As a celebration of chocolate, Easter would be my kids' ideal holiday but for the fact that we are Jewish and are supposed to be celebrating passover which apparently bans such consumption. This is something my daughter describes as "ridiculous" which here means "surely Moses didn't lead our ancestors out of slavery so we could miss out on chocolate." She has a point which is why we turn this into a big economics lesson.

Today is Easter Monday and at 10am Easter eggs around Australia go on sale (usually a 50 percent discount). Given that, for us, there is no need to specify a particular day to eat chocolate, our family policy is to wait until Monday to make any purchases. This, of course, means that our children must spend weeks walking passed chocolate egg filled isles wondering if their preferred options will actually be around on Monday. But it is a whole education in delayed gratification which is something you want to encourage especially where chocolate is concerned.

So I went out today and there was a large crowd. This made sense to the kids but surprised me. In any case, they were happy to rush through the store, collecting their preferred options quickly which was good for me. Normally, the decision would weigh on them as if it were life and death. Nonetheless, I can recommend the cross-cultural price sensitive experience as a good way of managing the holidays.

Elsewhere, Peter Martin has his own economics and Easter issues.