Eve eve eve: a rant.

 Today is the eve of Christmas Eve.

Traditionally in England on Christmas Eve we eat a mince pie, hang up stockings, and open the last window on our Advent Calendar. 

It's a happy time because here we don't even have to worry about whether we've been good during the course of the year. Father Christmas always leaves us presents, anyway (personally, I think the American Santa is quite mean. And un-saintly, too. And theologically ignorant. Jesus, it is said, was born as a gift to the world, not just to the good people. And, in fact, the good people (if there have ever been any truly good people) didn't actually need Him).

Anyway. 

There is a new trend for giving children Christmas Eve boxes full of gifts, thereby, one would imagine, spoiling the glorious anticipation of Christmas Day itself. 

Children nowadays cannot be asked to wait, apparently.

Now, if this is the case, then think of the poor little souls tonight. We surely can't let them wait a whole day for their Christmas Eve box: we need to give them some presents today, too.

We could call this a Christmas Eve Eve box.

But then - and I'm sure you have already seen the problem - we can't expect all those little children to wait...

Christmas Eve Eve Eve? Christmas Minus Seven? 

Advent Advent?

The lack of a neat grammatical form for this kind of thing is quite a nuisance, but perhaps this is inevitable given that we have so recently acquired the wisdom and kindness to introduce the Christmas Eve box. 

The odd thing is, though, that I'm not sure that the darling children are actually all that much happier.

Word To Use Today: eve. This is a version of the word even, which is short for evening. The Old English form was ǣfen.