Every year, like clockwork, someone sees hot cross buns in the supermarket in early January and loses their mind. "It's nowhere near Easter!" they shriek into the void of social media. "What's next, Easter eggs in November? Pavlova in winter? Dogs and cats living together?"
Yes, I know it's already February. I should have written this a month ago when the outrage was fresh. But I've been too busy eating hot cross buns to blog about them, and that seems appropriate.
The outrage feels familiar to the sight of Christmas decorations in shopping malls in October - an actual psychic assault. It’s valid to sneer at those. They’re cynical and manipulative. They're a reminder of all the upcoming stress and obligations of buying gifts and preparing food, designed to get you spending asap.
Hot cross buns are just bread. Delicious, spiced, sweet bread with little dried fruit jewels and a perfect cross of icing. They're not asking anything of you, other than "hey, would you like some cinnamon?"
The "but they're seasonal!" argument falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. We don't get mad when strawberries show up in winter, shipped from the other side of the planet in a refrigerated container that's probably contributing to the heat death of the universe. But a hot cross bun in January? Sacrilege. A betrayal of our cultural values. An erosion of What Makes Easter Special. I am, famously, the most Christian person alive, and my sense of the sacred is not remotely offended by an early bun. If anything, this fixation on surface-level trimmings reveals how hollow our version of Easter already is.
You know what actually diminishes Easter? Not being able to get hot cross buns when you want them. Forced scarcity doesn't create meaning - it creates frustration and a black market of people hoarding them in their freezers like doomsday preppers.
Hot cross buns should be available year round. They should be in every bakery, every supermarket, every day. We live in a society where you can get a Big Mac at 3am but not a hot cross bun in December? What are we even doing here?
The early-bun complainers can continue their crusade against joy and convenience. Meanwhile, I’m buttering my tenth hot cross bun of the year so far, wishing I’d had even more.
— Hannah Shelley, MLIS (Metadata, Lattes & Impostor Syndrome) (@hannahshelley.site) February 4, 2026 at 4:19 PM
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