"Penultimate Day 2025"
by John Wilder
"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.
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!"
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