Christmas is only one week away, and the clock is winding down on the fiscal cliff. Over the weekend, Speaker Boehner reportedly offered some concessions to President Obama in the vein of tax hikes on actual millionaires and a temporary debt-ceiling hike, in exchange for some entitlement reforms — and as Ed summarized this morning, it may be the case that the White House is actually, sincerely ready to come to some king of agreement based on the new GOP offer.

The back-and-forth at least seems to be going on at a more rapid rate than it has since the election, anyway. Could this mean there’s an honest-to-goodness deal in the works? Maybe we aren’t necessarily headed over the cliff after all, but they’re all playing keeping their cards close to the vest:

House Speaker John A. Boehner and President Barack Obama met at the White House on Monday for another negotiating session on the fiscal cliff amid growing optimism that they can reach a deal to avoid the tax increases and automatic spending cuts due to take effect in a little more than two weeks.

It was the third face-to-face meeting between Boehner and Obama in the past eight days, and the first since word that Boehner had broken his stance against tax rate increases, offering to allow rates to rise on earnings over $1 million.

White House spokesman Jay Carney said in his daily briefing that “conversations continue” without elaborating on anything that was discussed at the 45-minute negotiating session late Monday morning. A Boehner spokesman also declined to offer any specifics.

Even if a cliff-deal is actually happening and President Obama and Speaker Boehner do reach some type of an agreement, there’s still the challenge of cobbling together some succinct, acceptable legislation and getting it through both chambers of Congress. That’s the mega-task that may be even more difficult:

Ruh-roh — Sen. Reid just said it “appears the Senate will be coming back the day after Christmas” to work on fiscal cliff, per @chadpergram

— Ed Henry (@edhenryTV) December 17, 2012

Christmas may be out, but… before New Years? Maybe? Anyone?