EGG DAY

So, I was getting off the train in Philadelphia, and I was standing in the vestibule between the cars, and the conductor turns to me.

“Hey,” she said, “guess what I just found out?”

This conversation could have gone a lot of ways.

“If someone rips off your thumb,” she said, “or, you know, it comes off . . .” She waited for me to nod. “ . . . it turns out, they use your big toe. Weird, huh? Well, happy holiday!”

Now, as it happens, I had heard of this, because my mom is a school nurse and she occasionally has to deal with a lost digit or two. “So I had to run down the hall with my flashlight when I already had an office full of kids,” she’ll say. “Those boys in that shop? They think they’re so big and tough. But as soon as someone gets a middle finger ripped off in a motor, you should see their faces. It was hard just to get one of them to hold my flashlight while I fished it out.” The implication being: They act like they’ve never seen a severed finger before.

Still, it seemed an odd thing to just say to someone standing around on a train on Easter morning.

Friends, I have to admit something. While I am generally very pro-holiday, I have never been able to get behind Easter. I have my reasons. Here they are.

1. It moves around too much

I realize Easter is not the only shifty holiday. Thanksgiving, for example, is on different dates each year—but always on the third Thursday in November. Easter is DEVIOUS. It flickers between March or in April. That can be a whole different SEASON here. It could be a winter snowstorm. It could be a blazing hot spring day. It has no seasonal identity.

2. I don’t eat ham, or lamb, or any of those rhyming meats

In fact, I don’t eat any meat at all. I have been meatless for many years now. And don’t get me wrong! I am all about making awesome vegetarian food for the holidays. But when you are vegetarian on Easter, people often make you . . .

3. EGGS

Eggs . . . are my kryptonite. And Easter is a holiday built all around them. YOU CANNOT ESCAPE THEM. You decorate them. You eat other forms of candy in the shape of them. (Robin Wasserman was scandalized to find out that I cannot even take Cadbury crème eggs, because it’s just sick and bizarre in my mind to eat something that has been designed to look that much like an egg. Why not just make candy that looks like a war wound? Who had this terrible idea?)

The only activity that’s ever really planned is an EGG HUNT. The last thing I want to hunt for in the entire world . . . is an egg. I thoroughly approve of taking eggs out of your house and hiding them, never to be found again. But to go looking for them! MADNESS!

And yes, when you finally get to dinner—often the most awesome part of any holiday—there is invariably some egg dish that a well-meaning person has prepared for the non-meat types. And I go green in the face. And I die.

“But the CANDY!” you say, not unreasonably. “What about the CANDY???”

I hear you on the candy. I do. But the fact that you get some candy doesn’t really make up for the rest of the day. I mean, you get candy on Halloween too . . . but Halloween would STILL be awesome without it. The fact that you also get candy just gold-plates it.

And, honestly? Easter is when the crap candy comes out. The aforementioned crème eggs. Peeps. Jellybeans. Crusty, colored sugar lumps all. The truly superior candy (by this, I of course mean tiny chocolate bars) is generally the providence of Halloween. I don’t know why this is. I don’t make the rules. That’s just usually the way it goes.

I know these are strong views. I know that Peeps devotes are reading this in shock. But I think, Peep friends, that you must admit that Peeps are just old marshmallows covered in even more sugar. And how can you trust any candy that can be stored for ALL OF TIME and taste essentially the same, maybe just a little crispier?

Easter is also the only holiday I’ve spent in the hospital. (The time I ended up in the emergency room after sticking paper up my nose doesn’t count, as that was on Christmas Eve, not Christmas.) When I was six, my cousin hit me between the eyes with my Barbie sportscar (by accident) and I woke up the next day unable to see correctly. I can’t even remember what was wrong with me, but I do remember that it rained all day . . . WHICH IT OFTEN DOES ON EASTER.

I hate to be down on any holiday. You know I love them. I get behind my festivities! But Easter is just not as good as the others, and it’s best to be honest. And it does have good things, like flowers and rabbits. But really, flowers are a spring thing, and I already control all the rabbits.

Speaking of, my rabbit is out. You know it’s my rabbit because it looks like this:


Mine.

The rabbit is a relative of the stocking that also belongs to me:



One of these is mine. Try to spot it.

I’ll be back tomorrow with MORE BLOG, and perhaps you will join me for the LIVE BLOG TV SHOW at 6pm New York Time. Last time, I got pranked, climbed out of a window, and did some matchmaking. Who KNOWS what will happen tomorrow! See you at 6!