Take a close look at this picture. What does it look like to you? The bar coded label is a clue that it's food of some kind, scooped from the bulk bins and conveniently packaged. Rice crackers, maybe? Some kind of mints?
Hint. My sister bought this in the snack aisle at a Loblaw's in Gatineau, Quebec. Next to the ju jubes and prepackaged almonds and nuts and bolts.
Can you make out the label? Hosties Rondes. That's right. Round hosts.
Hosts. They are. actually. Hosts. The thin, crumbling, explode-on-your-tongue, stick-to-the-roof-of your-mouth, Lamb-of-God-who-takes-away-the-sins-of-the-world wafers. Hosts. Unconsecrated, presumably, but those self same foam avatars of faith and obedience and mystery. The larger ones that the priest solemnly breaks in half and "makes the thing that looks like an owl," as my sister remembers it. Sold in the snack row.
If I had guess for 1000 years what was in the bag my sister brought me, a bucket of hosts sold in a depanneur would not have *ever* crossed my mind.
In the movie Les Invasions Barbares, Denys Arcand crafted a brilliant illumination of the precipitious way in which Quebec shrugged off the cloak of the Church. Trying to raise some money (for a hospital), a priest leads an art dealer through a dim, dusty basement jammed with statues and relics unhinged from their perches. The foci of adoration of decades, centuries, now worthless, empty as a puff of air.
To me, that scene resonated as the most powerful example of an empire rendered irrelevant in one heated moment. Until now. Des hosties rondes, idly munched on in the car or on the deck at the cottage, familiar and reassuring on the tongue, no need to examine why.
"This was the second set I actually bought you," admitted my sister. "We saw them the first time when we were camping last fall. I bought you some then, but we ate them all on the trip back. They're weirdly addictive."
I eat one as I write this. Yes, Sunday after Sunday rises to the fore on the taste of it. Another one. A sacrament of anachronistic curiosity.
7 comments:
Wow. Even *I* hadn't heard of those. I feel so out of touch with my roots ;-)
I will relay this bit of information to my (Catholic-raised, but non-practising, like most Québécois) family when I go to Québec this week.
I'm not Catholic and only once or twice in my life have I gone to churches where they served the wafer-y things instead of actual bread. The first time I encounter these disks, I didn't understand that they were supposed to be eaten. They're so far removed from anything I perceive as food. In fact, my dad tells a story of sitting in church with the wafer in his hand, contemplating that this thing was supposed to represent bread and that bread was supposed to represent the body of Christ. (Remember -- Protestent theology) In his contemplation, he dropped the thing in a moment of silence and listened to it roll to some inaccessible location.
Odd that these are actually sold as food now. And even odder that I too would buy it if I saw it for sale somewhere.
Do they also sell that awful-tasting church wine? Just wondering...
Well, they *do* sell wine...
I can't make cultural sense out of this at *all*. Is it an excess supply thing that caught on, like the dumping of government cheese into school cafeterias? Some kind of symbol of a shift from a religious to a consumer society? An overt and defiant act of demystifying the church that's slid lazily into the snack aisle and is one step away from nacho cheese flavoured?
Ooooh, but think of the tremendous marketing potential, were they to have a little flavouring added! Think of the ad copy and "zany" flavour names!
the obvious - Nacho Cheez-us Christ!
Jalapeno flavour- "Hot as Hell, but it'll get ya to Heaven!"
*"No Meat On Friday" Brand* Body Of Christ Prawn Crackers!
"Lamb of God! Now with mint jelly!"
"Low in Fat! Now you CAN cast the first Stone-d Wheat Thins"
"To Everything There is a Seasoning..."
"A Holy Trinity- of savoury herbs and spices!"
and my favourite:
"The Immaculate Confection!"
i smell royalties! i guess i'm going to hell now, though....
That is just. bizarre. I've never heard of that. Quebec is sometimes the strangest place.
Also, hi! I like your blog, thought I'd say hi.
I saw a funny guy on TV the other night joking about this very thing. He joked that he wanted to take all the wafers home and put them in a bowl of milk - 'Christ Chex' they would be called. Little does he know - it's almost a reality!
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