Despite the fact that Easter is falling just 38 days after Valentine’s Day, the earliest such occurrence since 1913, the Nielsen Company is reporting that chocolate candy sales will hit $318 million this year, the second biggest holiday of the year for candy (hint: guess which is the leader).

Also, domestic sales of eggs during this week alone will exceed $95 million and consumers will purchase at least 17 million egg-coloring kits during the same period. Incidentally, the metropolitan markets of Salt Lake City/Boise will see far higher than average of spending (by at least 78 percent) for egg coloring kits than in any other domestic market, save for Cincinnati and Buffalo/Rochester.

And, if you think you’ve been seeing a lot of ads for Peeps marshallow chicks, especially on cable television, your hunch is supported empirically. Advertising budgets for Easter candy, although not as high as in the most recent two years because of the early holiday, nonetheless will top $60 million. In fact, according to Nielsen, advertising spending for Easter candy has been higher than that for Halloween since at least 2004. The largest share of advertising ($22 million) is spent on cable television. Online advertising is only a very modest $800,000.

The National Retail Federation expects Easter sales — for everything from apparel and gifts to flowers and candy — will top $14.44 billion. The holiday spending average per consumer is expected to be the same as last year at $135.

While yours truly will never bring a McDonald’s Filet-o-Fish sandwich to his lips, I was intrigued to see that the nation’s leading fast-food franchiser only advertises the sandwich during the six weeks of the Lenten season which precedes Easter. Last year, $4.5 million was spent for the Lent campaign.

Unlike the Roman and Western churches, the Orthodox churches, which set Easter sequentially after Passover (which happens in mid-April this year), will mark the observance on April 27.