“Ah, distinctly I remember it was in the bleak December…”

December? Really, Mr. Poe? December? If I were asked to pick the bleakest month of the year I think it would have to be February. But I get it. It’s hard to get a good rhyme for the second month of the year.

        “It was in the estuary towards the end of February
        When I questioned, sad and weary, why I lived on evermore.”

Nah. “The Raven” would never have gotten anywhere with a line that rhymed with February. Setting that grand poem in a swamp instead of a gloomy parlor just wouldn’t have been the same either.

But in December winter has barely gotten a good start. Everyone’s excited about the Yuletide season and those of us near or above the Mason Dixon line in the US scan every cloudy sky actually hoping to see the first flurries of the season.

But by February even the merriest of winter enthusiasts have generally had enough of shoveling sidewalks and sliding home to work with muscles sore from the tenseness of being on edge with the surprise black ice that coated the streets the night before and, suddenly finding religion, praying you don’t slide into anybody else on your bumper car ride home.

We think nostalgically of warm walks in the woods and parks while cabin fever has reduced us to the point where a simple family infraction that involves you finding the morning bagels in a plastic bag tied up with a knot so tight that an Eagle Scout couldn’t untie it (instead of just using a twist tie as any sane person would do) BEFORE you’ve even had that first cup of coffee is cause for a meltdown.

But I speak hypothetically, of course.

So how to cope? Well, those with money can jet off to warmer climes, I suppose. I know Mardi Gras exists primarily as a means of celebrating all the excesses of human indulgences one can think of before Lent sets in, but I can’t help but think that it’s also a way of breaking loose from the weariness of winter. I suspect that most people travel to New Orleans simply as an escape from their winter blues.

But like many others, I suppose, I don’t have the financial means to do that, tempting as it is. And that’s probably a good thing. With my luck I would die in some horribly embarrassing situation, not necessarily because of what I was doing but because with my luck I would be in the just the wrong place at just the right time. And wouldn’t that be a terrible way to go? I know, I know, that’s a morbid thought. But every year there are fatalities.

As a horror writer, though, I can’t help but imagine that those horrible situations would make for some interesting ghosts, though. Those drunken spirits would haunt Bourbon Street rattling beads instead of chains moaning, “Show us your BOOOOOObs!”

So how DO I deal with the winter blues?

To be honest, in spite of everything I’ve said, it isn’t really that big a problem. I’m not a summer person—that’s just too hot. And spring is a blur of just one long sneezing fit followed by another.

Autumn is my season. With my favorite holiday, Halloween!

So my family and I spend a good bit of the post-Christmas winter months planning for our Halloween celebrations.
Yep, that’s right. Halloween. We really do. And when we finally do have a snow that will pack well enough to sculpt some good figures, our snowmen definitely do have a Halloween-inspired theme.

And speaking of themes, as of this writing, we do, in fact, have a theme already picked out for next year’s Halloween party which is…

No, I’m gonna hold onto that. That will have to be the subject of another blog. So put your sleds away and get out those plastic skulls and funkins ’cause there are only 242 days until Halloween!