Rick's List

I once wrote a short story — it's mercifully vanished over the years — in which Satan had a dreadful secret: His favorite holiday was Easter. NOT in the religious sense but, rather, in the "magical bunny hides eggs / parents give lots of candy / we'll all have roast lamb for dinner!" context.

There was no witty or dark twist to the story. It was a Raymond Carveresque, "no real denouement" piece — without any of the Carver skill and character insight that would have made it actually good. Instead, all that happened in my story was that Satan found a competitive share during the egg hunt (chortling in a ghastly, sulphur-scented glee with each discovery); he later ate a double helping of lamb at the repast and helped with the dishes; and he then returned to Hell until next year.

If I were to rewrite that story today, I might throw in a hook — as in, what if Easter took place on April Fool's Day? No telling what mayhem might ensue!

As it turns out, Easter IS on April Fool's Day this year — and I hope Satan's not paying attention.

Personally, I'm not a fan of Easter. In the big hierarchy of special days, it ranks way behind Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, the 4th of July, my birthday, and Walpurgis Night. Easter simply doesn't have the good-times payoff required to be called a great holiday.

Well, it was either Cher or Omar Khayam who said, "Turn back, turn back / O time in thy flight / Make me a child again / Just for tonight." And if I could pull that off, I'd recalibrate Easter so it was more kookily resonant. Some of my

1

retroactive improvements: After the Egg Hunt, children will be required to eat all of the eggs they found — shells and all — sorta like the Coney Island hotdog-consuming contests that are always and oddly won by people who are never fat.

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If a child fails to finish eating all the eggs, she or he must attend summer school and take a six-hour-a-day course on "The Golden Age of Dutch Pamphleteering."

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.You'll still be able to dye the eggs, of course — that's part of the fun! — but the only color they can be dyed is the off-white shade they were to begin with.

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As a comic spin on the White House tradition of sparing a Thanksgiving turkey, the President will, just after the annual Easter Parade, execute the saved turkey from November.

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You thought I was going to have the President save a bunny, didn't you?

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Raymond Carver will choose my entry, "Easter Day with the Sulphur-Breathed Demon" as the grand-prize winner in the internationally famous "Happy Bunny Short Fiction Competition."