It's a countdown to the nascency of fun. Not a countdown to the weekend per se, as that would involve the sticker starting on Monday. Nor to weekend nights and all they entail; that would be the standard start on Sunday that comes on the package. This is something a little more esoteric.
Everyone who gets as ramped up about Christmas as I do (I've already started singing the songs) knows, the best part of Christmas isn't Christmas Day; it's Christmas Eve. Having sung songs, shopped, cooked, decorated and sung some more for 24 days, one reaches a beautifully cider-simmering fever pitch that culminates on the Eve, where all preparations and adult organization disintegrates back into straight-up childhood anticipation. Even with all the gift receipts wadded in your bag, you're still thinking: Ohboyohboyohboy SANTA'S COMING.
It's not the actual gifts, or food; it's the anticipation of them. Reality hardly ever compares to the fantasy of what's just around the corner. So in theory the most exciting day of the week is Friday, when you can't wait to clock out, get home, and start having all that fun. My bizarro personal calendar counts down through those disappointing non-Fridays, so that when I reach the start of a new row, I feel like I'm at the peak of some great precipice of promise, about to take the plunge back down into mediocrity. It lends a certain inertia to the workweek, I must say. In an almost terminal feedback loop, I am now starting to get excited on Thursdays for the exciting nascency of Fridays. Told you I'd read way to much into this.
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*Author's Note: It is weirdly difficult to write expect after except. Watch out for that one.
