Between the cold rain, the lack of holidays, and the self-righteous face pubes, it’s clear: November blows.
November is the dumbest month, breeding hair out of dead follicles, mixing charity and instant Facebook gratification, stirring misery with cold rain. C’mon, I’m not going to go totally T.S. Eliot—you get the idea. November blows.
As the temperature dips below zero, you realize that over the previous six months, you’ve completely blocked out what freezing cold feels like. The leaves have fallen off the trees and the bare branches look scary and mean without snow to cover them. One day we will marvel that there was a time when Toronto saw snow in November—or snow in general.
As if the weather weren’t enough to bring you down, there’s the issue of November holidays. That is, November is the only month with no fun holidays. December has Christmas (and Hanukkah!), January has New Year’s, February has Valentine’s Day—not fun for everyone, but at least the chocolate goes on sale the next day. March has St. Patrick’s Day, April has Easter, May has Victoria Day, June has my birthday, July has Canada Day, August has Unspecified Civic Holiday—it doesn’t need to be more specific, the temperature is still above 20 degrees—September has Labour Day, October has Halloween. November? Remembrance Day.
And now that Movember is fully entrenched, we can all look forward to a month of boyfriends, brothers, sons, fathers, and friends who are so proud of their moustaches, the hairy symbols of their allegiance to a Good Cause. Now is the time to commit to that idea you’ve been toying around with: suspending your Facebook account. Otherwise, get ready for the annual deluge of self-righteous face pubes.
One day, we will marvel at the fact that people once donated money to charity without ironically altering their facial hair. Until then, let us sedate ourselves with hot drinks and pumpkin-flavoured everything and hold out hope that for our children’s children, November will just be a scary word in a fairy-tale e-book.
