The Loss of the Unique

Years ago in the mid nineties when I first began visiting Switzerland and my at-that-time Swiss inlaws, one of my most memorable visits, and actually my FIRST visit, was at Christmas. We surprised them on Christmas Eve, when they did their celebrating: the ringing of the bell to summons the family into the tree room, the tree just lit for the evening; the gathering of the family around the table for songs and stories and musical instrument playing; the giving of gifts; the sharing of laughter and talk until it was time to dine.

Upstairs in the most magical Swiss home one might imagine, not a chalet, for we weren’t in the mountains, but something that resembled a small castle complete with tower that sat upon a hill overlooking a small lake and die Rigi and other glorious peaks of central Switzerland, my then mother-in-law had at the top of the creaking, old stairs a small dish of chocolates called Merci. I don’t know why I felt I had to sneak them as I passed by, one here going downstairs (merci!), another on the way up (merci, noch einmal!), but I did, and was greatly taken by their “European-ness,” these little chocolates in a dish, with the magic of a Swiss Christmas all around. On every visit to Switzerland, whether I was still living in the States, or when we lived in Germany, whenever my mother-in-law had those chocolates out, I felt somehow like I had come home, how special these were to me.

I never saw these chocolates in the States. For one I never looked, for another I thought they were a product that would only be found across the pond. But lo-and-behold, they have gone the way of nutella, toblerone, and who knows how many other “specialty” items that were only available to those who had the gumption to expand their horizons past their neighborhood Target store. I am thrilled that this candy can be found closer to my current home in the Pacific Northwest, but there’s something missing. And I think that’s the loss of the uniqueness of this chocolate, the specialness of something as simple as this small, German candy. Granted it’s simply a symptom of our global economy, granted I did not personally know the maker of it, but taken out of its environment it somehow loses an authentic context and  becomes nothing more than a commodity product;  now that it obviously is mass produced for an American market it feels there’s not much to value about it anymore,  it’s just something to have. Non, merci.