The Penultimate Holiday

I woke up this morning, sat up in bed stretching my arms over my head and said, "Ahh! The penultimate holiday!'

My wife opened one eye to a small slit and stared at me. So I stretched again and said again, "Ahh! The . . ."

"I heard you the first time." she muttered into the blanket.

"Well, it is." I insisted.

"Yeah, whatever . . ." she mumbled and rolled over, burrowing deeper into the covers. I sat there a few moments wondering how anyone could have so little curiosity. So I nudged her.

"Hon?" I said softly. Then I nudged her a little harder. I got an irritated half-growl and she pulled further away from me. "Hon?" I repeated.

"WHAT?" The blankets exploded away from her and I fell off the bed backwards.

"Oh, never mind." I said, scrambling to my feet and backing out of the room. "I'll tell you later."

While I was brewing a cup of coffee she appeared in the doorway. It's a good thing we met 35 years ago, I thought. "You're no picnic, either." she said, apparently reading my mind. Married people do that after a while. Little boys are right. Girls are creepy.

"So what's so important that you can't let me sleep in on Christmas Eve?"

"If you choose to call it that." I answered.

"What are you talking about?" she growled, taking my coffee cup. I gestured rather futilely to my cup then began brewing another one.

"Christmas Eve is the penultimate holiday." I explained. "Penultimate means the second to last or the next to last in a series of things."

"Yeah . . . so?"

"In this case it is penultimate for two reasons. First, it is the last day before Christmas. But . . . and this is the really cool part, it is also a holiday on it's own."

"Nobody celebrates Christmas Eve." she sounded kind of exasperated.

"Yes they do." I insisted. It even has it's own name: Christmas Eve. We don't hear about Groundhog Day Eve or Easter Eve or Fourth of July Eve or Labor Day Eve or . . ."

"Enough! I get it." she said. "But so what?"

"Don't you get how cool that is?" I asked. "It is a holiday known for being the last day before another holiday AND it is the next to last holiday of the whole freakin' year!" I sat there looking at her. Waiting for something -- some kind of response. "AND there is a word for it! Penultimate means next to last. It is the next to last for two reasons. How cool is that?"

She just sat there looking at me, still half asleep, holding my World's Greatest Coffee Drinker mug. "What about New Year's Eve?" she asked.

"That doesn't count." I said. "It cancels itself out."

"What's that mean?"

"It might be known as being the last night before a holiday but that holiday isn't until next year. That means it's not the next to the last -- it's the next to the first holiday." I took a sip from the World's Most Patient Wife mug I was holding. "So . . . Christmas Eve wins."

That turned out to be the penultimate statement of that conversation.

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