easter_bunnyAccording to the Arizona Republic, Easter is losing its punch:

Today, Easter Sunday remains the holiest day of the year for Christians, but it is far less significant outside church doors.

phxated_wyman“Somewhere after the ’60s or ’70s, Easter lost its public space,” said Penne Restad, a history professor at the University of Texas-Austin who has written extensively on American holidays. “You can put up a Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center or the White House, but you can’t put up a cross.”

Given that—and the fact that Apple is based in godless California—you’d think you could have gone down to the Apple store yesterday and help a friend get a new laptop.

(No, not the iPad—you’d have to be crazy to get the first iteration of a new Apple product.)

I’m not a complete idiot, so I checked the store’s website to see time it opened on Sunday. 11 a.m., it said.

But when we got there, the store was dark, and a security guard, oddly, sat in the darkened interior, reading a book. This was undoubtedly made more difficult by the fact he was wearing sunglasses.

To make matters worse, there was a sign on a stand inside the door, saying clearly that the store was open at 11 a.m. on Sunday.

So, we thought—fuck the Apple Store.

We’ll go to Best Buy, which has those odd little sequestered “Apple tables.”

You can see this coming: Best Buy was closed too.

“If I’m not getting a laptop,” announced my friend, “I want ice cream.”

A perfect day for the classic Phoenix ice cream parlor Mary Coyle, yes?

Nope: No answer when we called.

What was particularly galling, in all three cases, is that the stores didn’t even both to use a sign or an answering machine message to say, “Hey, it’s Easter, numbnuts—We’re closed.”

They just assumed that people would know they weren’t open for Easter.

As usual, the Arizona Republic was wrong.

What did we do?

We went to Gallo Blanco and ate flan and postre de chocolate—and cursed the Easter bunny.