Whether it's the fact that unemployment levels reached an eight-year high last week, the specter of a looming war with Iraq, or a general feeling of insecurity about potential future terrorist attacks here, polls indicate that Americans are markedly less cheery this holiday season.
Radio stations, striving to diminish the sense of national gloom, were quick after Thanksgiving to air endless hours of holiday tunes: One Philadelphia station, in a perhaps overzealous embracing of the holiday spirit, made the decision to broadcast holiday music every hour, every day through Christmas.
And retailers, seeking to diminish the economic gloom that has pervaded their balance sheets for the last year, are promoting, among other things, products that appeal to our nostalgic childhood memories -- when life was less uncertain. Care Bears and Transformers, as noted previously by the Collegian, are back. E.T., one of several movies of our generation, was also back last spring. But so is another popular cultural icon: s'mores.
That's not to say s'mores ever really disappeared. Historians trace s'mores back to the 1920s, when the Girl Scouts first published the "official recipe" in Tramping and Trailing with the Girl Scouts -- no doubt a major bestseller. Ever since, people young and old have ventured outdoors and enjoyed the taste of chocolate and marshmallows melted over a campfire. However, the notion of s'mores being a rugged, cozy campfire treat has been transformed in recent months by restaurateurs and product manufacturers.
A popular urban coffee shop has made s'mores its signature menu item. Customers have the assorted ingredients delivered to their table, along with the requisite tools: a fire and bamboo sticks. It was in an outdoor seating area at one of these shops in Washington, D.C., this summer that two friends reintroduced me to one of my favorite childhood desserts. It felt odd to sit around a portable campfire roasting a marshmallow, surrounded by the flow of D.C. nightlife; but it also admittedly felt a bit comforting -- a touch of home and the past in a new place.
Incidentally, locations recently opened up at fellow Big Ten schools Ohio State, Michigan State and Michigan, and for those of us without a location nearby, the chain offers a "Campfire S'mores Kit" -- fire not included.
A trendy coffee shop, however, isn't the only business that's been pushing s'mores. The local Super Wal-Mart, one of the region's most popular and derided vendors, and other food markets have recently featured large displays of marshmallows, chocolate bars and graham crackers grouped together. Within the past year, a s'mores variation of Ritz crackers has come out, and the University Creamery has recently been pushing its blue-toned Lion S'more ice cream flavor. Finally, if you prefer staying home, try one of the recipe variations released this year: HikerMama.com suggests using white chocolate bars in place of the traditional milk chocolate ones.
Allergies to chocolate? No problem: You, too, can consume s'mores. Non-edible s'mores-themed goods are increasingly popular, as shown by a holiday-decoration maker's decision to release a line of s'mores products. Among them: a s'mores stocking and matching s'mores stocking holder, s'mores candle, s'mores hot cocoa mug set, s'mores "Pirates on The Raft" ornament, s'mores snowman eight-foot garland, and, for those seeking a non-flammable source of light, a s'mores plug-in nightlight.
In total, the company offers roughly 40 s'mores-related items that feature smiling faces and evoke the sense of home and hearth that Bing Crosby and Andy Williams rhapsodize about in their ever-popular classic Christmas songs.
So, what's the message behind this sudden proliferation of s'mores-related products? Simply put, eating s'mores evokes nostalgic, comforting thoughts, and marketers know it. With the exception of a freak fire or a s'more-making experience gone awry, most people have fond memories of eating s'mores when they were young.
In today's stressful world, these people are more than happy to return to those days, even if only for 20 minutes in a coffee-shop between business meetings. More symbolically, as the BBC recently noted, s'mores are a distinctly "American thing." From an international perspective -- as crazy as this may sound -- foreigners, or at least foreign reporters, see s'mores as representing the ruggedness and adventurous nature of the American spirit. At a time when the president is known both for his love of another staple of our childhood diets (peanut-butter and jelly sandwiches) as well as for long stays at his Crawford, Texas, ranch, one can't help but conjure up an image of Dubya and his family sitting around the campfire and partaking in the joy of warmly toasted s'mores on a cool Texas night.
S'mores obviously aren't going to revive our nation's ailing economy, and they aren't going to resolve our homeland security woes. And despite newfound commercial and international enthusiasm, they don't embody everything wonderfully American.
They do, however, provide a majority of us with a small sense of satisfaction, and maybe even a temporary, nostalgic sense of warmth and security, which in uncertain times like these, isn't that bad a thing at all.
