How We’re Doing Halloween From Now On, for the Sake of Children in Bondage

Friends, I cried in Target last week. In the Halloween candy aisle. It was the kind of crying that comes dangerously close to gulping sobs, the kind you stifle with your hand as you suppress the urge to throw up. I couldn’t help it – looking at all those mountains of mini Snickers, M&Ms, and Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups was just too much for me.

A few days later, I said soberly to E, “We can’t buy M&Ms anymore.” And then I handed him a printed copy of this blog post by Tsh Oxenreider. “I just can’t do it,” I said. “Now that I know this, I can’t buy commercial chocolate anymore.”

E read the article, and then looked at me steadily. “Okay,” he said, “but you do realize you can’t change things all by yourself, right?”

“I know,” I said, my tone instantly becoming a little heated, “but it’s like anything else – if we all wait for the rest of the world to do something, nothing will ever change. And apathy is no way to live. I won’t be able to sleep at night if I know that I bought and fed my own child chocolate that is the product of other children under slavery or oppression.”

That’s right, slavery.

Oh, did you perhaps think slavery and oppression were things of the past?

Close to two million children in West Africa know differently. They are the ones who work the cacao fields, either as slaves or as cheap labor that violates international child labor statutes. And your favorite chocolate companies? They apparently don’t care, because they purchase the cacao produced by these children under duress.

So last week, in Target, those piles and piles of bags of Halloween candy looked like misery, suffering, and even death to me. I decided then and there that I don’t want to spend one more cent supporting companies who make it possible for those cacao farms to stay in business. And I really don’t want one more bite of chocolate produced by child labor to pass L’s lips.

However, I know the latter isn’t a fully reasonable expectation. I am not going to be able to prevent L from ever again eating chocolate that is a product of child labor.

“What are you going to do about Halloween?” E asked me. “Throw away all the candy that’s not responsibly produced?”

This idea seems worse, somehow – like tossing a piece of a child’s life in the trash can.

We want to continue to celebrate Halloween – we don’t want to let this ruin our family traditions, especially those L really enjoys. So here’s what we’ve decided: we will let L keep the candy she gets trick-or-treating, but from now on, we ourselves will only buy chocolate that is responsibly produced, without the use of child labor. When L is old enough to understand, we’ll talk to her about the issues. Of course, she’ll eventually have to make her own decisions about where she puts her dollars, but we’re hoping to raise her with a heart for Jesus, a heart for the poor and marginalized, a heart that will influence her spending in positive ways.

I realize Halloween is this week, and you likely have already bought candy for your trick-or-treaters. I’m not asking you to make a mad dash to the store and return it, then go hunting for replacements. I’m just asking you to think before you buy the next time. If your family is anything like mine, you eat a lot of chocolate during the Christmas season. Maybe this year, you’ll make sure your Christmas chocolates are responsibly produced?

I know it’s not comfortable to confront the ways normal, everyday choices, like what we buy at the grocery store, contribute to evil in the world.  It’s much easier to live in blissful ignorance. Intentional living takes effort and thought, and often requires a closer look at what we’re willing to sacrifice. Me, I’ll trade my M&Ms for greater peace of mind, for a sense of integrity, for the love of my Jesus, who doesn’t want his little ones laboring under duress in the West African cacao fields.

There are some great resources in Tsh’s blog post on how to identify responsibly sourced chocolate, and links to places you can buy it, so I won’t repeat that info here. I simply want to invite you think about the power of your dollars, and to consider joining us in supporting farmers and companies who do grow cacao responsibly. And maybe, just maybe, if enough of us make these kinds of decisions with our dollars, we’ll see the end of atrocities like child slavery in our lifetimes.

Mercy & grace to you, friends.

Harmony

Photo credit: Paul Swansen. https://www.flickr.com/photos/pswansen/. License: Creative Commons Attributions-NoDerivs Generic 2.0