This is Tweener Week – the week between Christmas and New Year’s (or for those celebrating Hanukkah, it’s after the eighth candle is lit on the Hanukiah) – and it’s a little awkward if you ask me.
I mean, what do you say? It’s too late for “Merry Christmas” or “Happy Hanukkah”, and “Season’s Greetings” is starting to get a little stale.
You can’t say, “Happy New Year,” without looking like a loon bird.
“Happy Holidays” doesn’t work, because we’re BETWEEN holidays. That’s the point.
It’s too late to exchange gifts and too early to light fireworks.
Curiously, it’s still not too late – technically – to send out Christmas cards. Someone decided many years ago that as long as they are postmarked in the current year, you can slide. (Or, you can blame the U.S. Postal Service, the reliable standby.) But I digress.
It’s too early to take down the lights, but late enough that the tree is starting to look a little frayed.
Carols are done for the year, but you can’t sing “Auld Lang Syne” yet.
This isn’t a small problem. Just try to get anything done between December 26th and January 2nd. Except for maybe retailers and the military (those on deployment), no one is around – that’s because millions of Americans are on vacation. They’re at the mall, on the slopes, in the neighborhood…and they’re going to bump into each other …
“Jim! Merr…Seas…Happ…How you doin’?”
It’s awkward, I tell you.
So I’m going to call this “Tweener Week.” I don’t know the appropriate greeting, and don’t know what I’ll do with myself until January 1st, but at least with a label I can move forward. Therefore, until the new year, let me say to you and yours: I hope you have a Joyous Tweener!
…I’ll have to work on that.
