Penultimate Day 2025

“He has to operate wholly by touch.” – Top Secret

Think about the penultimate letter of the alphabet.  Because I wanted you to.

Penultimate Day.  This is a particular and peculiar institution of the Wilder family.  It started over a decade ago, my guess is 2011 or 2012.  The Mrs. was having problems with her Blackberry® phone (the one with the cool trackball and the tiny keyboard and complete inability to innovate after Apple® showed up) and wanted a new cell phone.  I was on vacation, and the closest place that sold phones with our carrier (which no longer exists) was 90 miles away.

We popped the kids in the car, and headed south to buy a phone.  We went to Best Buy®.  We ended up not buying the phone (the deal was awful) and decided to eat at Olive Garden™.  As I drove home, I decided to have fun with the kids, and told them that this was a Wilder family holiday.  They bought it, and we had a lot of phone fun.  The day before New Year’s Eve would therefore be forever known to us as Penultimate Day.

The next year, we remembered, and did the exact same thing.

What are the rules of Penultimate Day?

  • Wait for December 30,
  • Drive 90 miles south,
  • Look at cell phones,
  • Under no circumstances whatsoever actually buy a cell phone, and,
  • Have some Italian food at a casual-dining chain.

While it’s not a tough holiday, we’ve missed one year entirely (2023) and only Pugsley and I celebrated on 2022.  Oh, yeah, and then there was COVID, where being afraid of everything was encouraged.

So, we try to observe it when we can.  This year we had two exceptions:

  • Wait for December 30 (check),
  • Drive 90 miles south (a new restaurant opened nearby),
  • Look at cell phones (check),
  • Under no circumstances whatsoever, buy a cell phone (check), and,
  • Have some Italian food that incorporates pasta at a casual-dining chain (mostly check: The Mrs. was tired and took a nap, so we brought her a to-go entrée back).

So, while we did keep it, we didn’t manage to keep it wholly, so I guess still doesn’t count as a wholly holiday.  I’m okay with that, because life is change.  I’m fortunate that The Boy and Pugsley could both make it and spend time with the family.  I’m also very, very thankful for that.  I realized sometime around the time a kid gets 10 or 11, in the way the world works now, that I had spent half of the days I’d ever get to spend with that kid, so I did my best to be memorable.

But the holiday has changed for us.  Back then the kids were little.  Now, not so much.

Time goes by very quickly.  Don’t wish even a minute or an hour away.  And don’t forget to enjoy the things and people that you have in your life.  Heaven is being grateful for what you have, Hell is being envious for what you don’t.

You can choose Heaven, and you can also still work to make it better.  I have more full-family Penultimate Days behind me than in front of me, and that’s okay.  I’ve had the ones that we’ve had, and hopefully we’ve made a memory or two and in fifty or so years, one of my children will look back on December 30 and smile at the thought of Penultimate Day.  But that’s their choice, and that’s for them in the world that they make.

One of my resolutions was to drink more water.  I’ve only gotten to “drink more” at this point.

For me?  I’m glad we have this silly holiday.  I’ve always thought that the New Year holidays (Eve and Day) were contrived.  They were (and are, mainly) meaningless to me.  But Penultimate Day?  I also use that as a time to think about the passage of time and one of its most important elements, the time I spend with family and the memories that we’ve made.

That being said, then is my wish that all of us have a wonderful and prosperous 2026, but don’t feel the need to wish it away too quickly.

And when midnight hits you, I hope you have a Happy New Year!

(this is a better version of what I said last year)

Author: John

Nobel-Prize Winning, MacArthur Genius Grant Near Recipient writing to you regularly about Fitness, Wealth, and Wisdom - How to be happy and how to be healthy. Oh, and rich.

24 thoughts on “Penultimate Day 2025”

  1. John, your story reminds me of the made up holiday “Spanikopita” on The Venture Brothers. It was Greek instead of Italian, but many of the core beliefs are similar.

    The Greek islanders made up the holiday to hide a botched kidnapping attempt of young Rusty (you weren’t kidnapping your family were you???). Rusty believed it and came back year after year, so the town had to keep playing along.

    That particular episode was also a reflection on Rusty’s life and how things had changed since his youth except it involved the Greek spinach pastry instead of pasta.

    JB

    1. Anon-

      Is Adult Swim still on? Loved Space Ghost & Zorak. And Sealab 2021 with Erik Estrada. Not to mention Stewart Baker, aka Unknown Hinson, on Squidbillies. Elizabeth Cook did one character’s voice on it

      Used to do report writing in the middle of the night but am sorta married these days. Have to keep a “normal” schedule.

      1. It’s still on but isn’t what it used to be. I used to love all of those shows you mentioned, and would often stay up all night Saturday just to watch. Not sure what happened to them, but they lost that creative spark.

    1. I had made a Penultimate Day ale for the last couple years after reading of your Wilder Festivus. I had planned to this year also, but it might wind up being a New Year’s ale instead due to ongoing remodeling at Ye Olde Dogge Washeteria that needs to be finished before the reopening Jan 3.

      Missus and I had planned to drive to Pensacola beach with the 3 dogs for Christmas week, but she had a pretty bad cough on the penultimate day of our departure. So it became a staycation instead.

      Here’s to an interesting 2026.

        1. I miss driving too fast with my AR like during COVIDCON. Bring on the superflu pandemic!

    2. Your comment reminded me of the Simpsons “How to Cook for Forty Humans” read mistakenly as “How to Cook Humans.” Free range Amish I can understand but like Fukushima Tuna, you are probably best limiting yourself to one Manhattan per week. That island is toxic.

      As for New Year. Glad our host enjoys and reflects. I wish I were older. The warm embrace of the actuarial blanket helps to take the edge off the empire ending chills. Midlife in this dystopia, OTOH, is a meat grinder. Sisyphus rolling that dollar uphill only to be told by the negress at the window that the Cloud City doesn’t take cash.

      As I have grown more rings around my core, narrower as the years run by, compressed by the encroachment of clown world, I find new year to be distasteful.

      Like a birthday marking another trip around the Clown, but instead of cake and friends toasting your ability to not die again this year we get a billion strangers pissing in the street and running around like Hunger Games and every scribe in the empire recounting all of the ways in which Nothing [Good] Ever Happens again this year with their top listicles of humiliation.

      The official counting of sheep in the big sleep of the rip van Whites. Somewhere the Autistic reporter on the scene of the wreckage of FUSA repeats the line: “The Portfolio is okay.”

      Obviously, my glass is not half full. Perhaps I will try some Amish too. Fill up my glass with a few fat fingers of Rye. If it warms up, work on that fencing. Maybe slow the zombies down enough for my bad eyes to drop a few more with all that brass I have moaning in the basement to be set free. Cheers!

      1. Saw a video today, some foreigner (Dutch?) protesting in New Orleans about how illegals had every right to be here, no matter if we get poorer. She needs to go home.

      1. In bed by 11 is our sacred rule. If there is enough hullabaloo to wake us, I say “Happy New Year” and kisses missus. Been doing that since I was 30, NYE like St Patrick’s day, is amateur night and I’m not mixing with that.

  3. And a happy penultimate to you and your family! We did a recycling/garbage dump trip yesterday (hilariously called a “Convenience Center” by our county) and ate dinner at our favorite restaurant. We’re headed back to Charleston today; Downtown’s devolved into amateur night there, so we stay home. And are in bed by 11 at the latest.

    Looking forward to ’26. Both Clif High & Marty Armstrong say it’ll be interesting.

    1. We were still up at midnight, but only noticed the New Year by the fireworks outside. Good times. Yes, the window for Interesting Times is open now.

  4. We don’t have anything that grand, but we will take the dog to look at Christmas lights not taken down. After that, we’ll watch the neighbor use a tremendous amount of his paycheck to light up the sky, scare the dogs, and bring in the new year…if I don’t sip a little too much bourbon and fall asleep watching old westerns.

  5. whelp…

    i learned something new today! err, actually 2 things: (1) the definition and (2) the pronunciation of a new word!

    thank you for sharing! i haven’t visited here like i have in the past. Certainly some great ideas to consider. sincerely,
    carolinaTURTLE!

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