BREATHE deeply as you walk into the Monk Bar Chocolatier shop in Goodramgate and you will smell something you couldn't market if you tried.

It is the smell of Easter, being created by Ray and Liz Cardy as they work to sate York's desire for dark chocolate - milk chocolate, white chocolate, in fact any sort of chocolate you can think of - in time for Easter.

York has a very special relationship with chocolate.

And you may not realise it, but North Yorkshire also has a very special relationship with the festival of Easter - it was at the Synod of Whitby in 664 AD that the precise way to date Easter, still observed today, was set.

But Easter is as bound up with chocolate as with religion these days, and the mounting fear in recent years has been that Easter is going the way of Christmas.

In short, the dread is that it is becoming over-commercialised, over-exposed and overrun with yet more things for us to buy.

But is it?

"I think it's a shame if people think Easter has become too commercial. I don't think it has - it's good fun. People put a lot of thought into choosing their Easter eggs," says Ray Cardy.

As if to prove the point, a customer enters the shop and starts to reel off a set of instructions for his cocoa-based Easter treat. "We're that busy making eggs that we haven't had time to look around the shops yet, but I think it's a shame if other shops are making Easter too commercial," Ray adds.

"I think it's easy to say everything about Easter is becoming too commercialised," says Chris Cullwick, vicar of St Andrew's and chaplain with the York Industrial Chaplaincy.

"But I do think the meaning of Easter is being ignored through the sheer business of life and the pressure people live under so that it is just becoming a welcome holiday weekend, the meaning of which has been lost.

"I do look forward to the chocolate, not having eaten it through Lent, and it is something that it is quite hard for me to give up. But so many people give Easter eggs without realising what they mean. I think a lot of things about Easter have been robbed of their special meaning because they have become commonplace. Hot cross buns especially had a particular significance on Easter Friday, and now we can buy them all-year-round, that has been lost."

The Rev John Roden, senior chaplain with the Selby Coalfield Industrial Mission, is a man who has spoken out against the commercial exploitation of Christmas in the past. But he has few concerns about the Easter festival going the same way.

"It may have been over-commercialised," he said, "but I don't think that has had any adverse effect on those people who want to celebrate Easter. On Easter Day, those people who want to go to church are not prevented. The emphasis ten to 20 years ago may have been more on the Christian side of it, but I would be positive. I don't think commercialism has had an adverse effect on the Christian message.

"My main beef with Christmas is that it starts so early and we're celebrating it in October now. But that's another issue altogether and I don't think that's a problem with Easter. And I realise people have to make a living, whether it's selling eggs or chocolate or bunnies."

So that's all right then. And anyway, says Katherine Hague, centre manager for Monk's Cross shopping Park, Easter simply isn't seen by most people as a predominantly commercial time - a chance to squeeze in yet more shopping.

"It has been a lot less busy at Easter than at Christmas, and I think people see Easter as more of a time to get away than a time for shopping," she says. "We are seven per cent up on footfall at Monks Cross on last year. But if it's warmer weather people want to sit in the garden, not go shopping. And if it's a grey day then people will come here. We do have activities on at the centre, but I think at Easter people tend to think more about getting away."

And that doesn't sound like a bad idea at all.

Updated: 11:31 Thursday, April 17, 2003