Dear Satan…

Happy Valentine... er, Halloween

Dear Father of Lies,

  I’m sorry I took so long to get back to You.  As You know, I’m on vacation.  Which actually brings Me around to answering Your request.

  No.  I’m afraid You can’t take the day off on Halloween.  Take Earth Day off or, if you like, the American presidential inauguration… oh, wait; that only happens every eight years or something, right?  Yeah, so take Earth Day or, I don’t know… Martin Luther King Day.  Something like that.

  I know You really had Your heart set on doing some trick-or-treating and then maybe an all-night rave, (although, personally, I’d have thought a rave would be a bit too much like work).  But We just can’t afford to upset the brand-loyalists.  In order to keep the vacation fund in the black, We’ve got to play to the base.  I can think of nothing that would distress that base more than You on vacation, even for a day.  Besides that, You get most of Your best ideas from their “Hell Houses”.

  Look, Beelzebub, the bottom line is that You’ve become more important to the daily operation of the old firm than anyone, (with the slightly possible exception of Republican Jesus).  Without You, the brand-loyalists would run amok.  You know as well as I do that if they didn’t have My list of perfectly-conceived laws and Hell as a consequence of breaking them, the base would be looting, killing and fornicating before you could say “Robert is your father’s brother”.  If that happens, it’s “goodbye, round-the-world cruise”.  No more first-class flights to Cancun.  No more archaeological vacations to Greece.  Lucifer, as I am My witness, no one will stand in the way of My vacation.

  Besides, I thought You liked all that spooky hoakum.  It’s certainly popular with the base.  Look, compare the box office gross for My handful of crappy movies like Oh, Gawd, and Bruce Almighty to the dozens and dozens of yours like The Omen or Rosemary’s Baby or End of Days.  That one about Hippie Jesus made bank, sure, but that’s one to your eleventy-trillion.  And really, His one big money-maker was more a horror flick than anything else.  Heh… it gave Him nightmares for weeks.

  So, I’m sorry.  It just can’t be done.  If it will help at all, though, You can swing by while You’re making the rounds of all the Hell Houses.  The boys and I are hosting a costume party at Dewey’s Flatiron in New York City.  Pop in and I’ll buy You a drink.  I think We can stretch the rules far enough for You to have a celebratory drink on Your own holiday.  I’ll be in the lounge downstairs.  You can’t miss Me, I’ll be dressed as You.

Wish You Were Here,

~Gawd