Absolutely No Machete Juggling

I hate Easter. In fact, with the exception of Halloween, I hate pretty much all holidays. I hate easter in particular though. Growing up, Christmas was the present holiday and Easter was the candy holiday, and I couldn't care less about most candy (at least when compared to presents). Easter was a no big deal kind of day for me. It meant I had to wear khakis to church, but that's about it.

However, my fiancee comes from a Catholic family, and Easter was a very big deal to them. They hid eggs, they hid baskets, they got presents, the whole deal. So as she and I integrate our lives together, doing something for easter is important, but I don't particularly like any of the egg-hiding mumbo jumbo. At least I didn't, until this year.

I have devised a system that makes Easter fun. It is a game that I have dubbed 'Peter Rottentail'.

Peter Rottentail essentially turns innocent and lame Easter festivities into seedy gambling events. I will detail the rules of how to play Peter Rottentail in this post. This is a great game to play for people without any kids who want to do something for Easter.

How To Play Peter Rottentail

Each player starts the game with an easter basket. Then each player must purchase easter eggs, at $1 per egg, with a maximum of five eggs. You can choose to play $5 or $10 per egg if you wish. Each player then writes her initials on her eggs with a wax crayon and dyes them, placing them in her basket. All of the money goes in another basket, referred to as the "Easter Cashket"

Once all of the eggs are created, all players have 10 minutes to walk around the Easter Zone (defined later) and get hiding place ideas. All players then leave the house with their baskets of eggs.

One by one, players are chosen at random (this can be done by rolling dice, flipping coins, etc). The chosen player takes one egg from their basket, enters the house, and hides it within the Easter Zone. They have one minute to do so. If they do not come back out within one minute, they forfeit one egg of theirs, which will not be hidden (called a Penalty Egg)

If a player finds another players egg while hiding their own, they may exit the house with it and place it in the appropriate player's basket (another type of Penalty Egg).

This repeats until all eggs have been hidden excluding penalty eggs, which stay in the baskets of the penalized players, giving them a disadvantage in the game.

Once all eggs are hidden, everyone reenters the house with their baskets, placing them in a community area.

Then everyone searches for eggs. When you find an egg, you place that egg in the basket of the player who created that egg. Once all of a player's eggs have been placed in his or her basket, that player has been eliminated. The player that located the Killing Egg yells that the player has been eliminated, and the eliminated player must sit in the community area like a chump waiting for the game to end.

Once all players but one have been eliminated, a winner is declared. The winner must then go and locate all of the eggs they hid that were not found. Failure to locate all hidden eggs will result in an automatic disqualification, and the winner will be the last player eliminated.

The winner collects the Easter Cashket, and may proceed to gloat and mock the other players for hiding their eggs so poorly.

The Easter Zone

The easter zone is the area of the home where eggs are allowed to be hidden. Each host of Peter Rottentail may define this zone. Hiding an egg outside of the zone will result in disqualification and automatic forfeiture of contribution to Easter Cashket.

It is a good idea to exclude certain rooms you don't want destroyed from the Easter Zone. For example, we exclude our bedroom closet, as people rummaging around in there would make a tremendous mess. We also include places we don't want to have to search - for example, all trash cans, litter boxes, and toilet tanks are excluded from the Easter Zone.

Explaining to your guests where the easter zone is provides a good opportunity to let people take the 10 minutes they need to think of hiding ideas. You don't want people to think very long about hiding spots once inside - that's why a 1 minute limit is placed on hiding eggs (it prevents people from doing things like dismantling your air conditioning vents to hide eggs).