Would you unveil a new product on a major holiday?

That’s what Nokia attempted with the launch of its Lumia 900 smart phone this weekend. Writing for Fortune (via CNN Money), Philip Elmer-DeWitt points out how ridiculous it was to start selling the phone on Easter Sunday.

Yes—that Easter Sunday. When many stores are closed.

The New York Times reported that “nearly all 39 AT&T stores within proximity of Times Square in Manhattan were either closed for Easter Sunday or did not answer phone calls. The few that were open did not have the handset in stock.”

The Times asked AT&T about the decision, and a spokesman said: “The Lumia has received tremendous product reviews and we have been taking pre-orders online and in our stores all week. We are already off to the races.”

For the Lumia 900, Nokia partnered with Microsoft in an attempt to go after Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android. On Friday, Nokia created some fervor around a Nicki Minaj concert in Times Square to celebrate the phone’s launch. But, as Elmer-DeWitt pointed out, the excitement was more about the concert than the phone.

He did offer this defense for the Easter launch:

“The only explanation I can think of is that this phone, no matter how good the reviews (in fact, the reviews were mixed), couldn't draw an iPhone-sized crowd on its own merit. So Nokia and Microsoft launched it with a baked-in, prepackaged excuse.”

No word yet on how that worked out for them.

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