Shitty Month Showdown: November vs. February

In the northern latitudes there are four months that are dreaded, that can chill a man's soul even as he sits in the warmth of the summer sun, and they are known as November, December, January, February. These four horsemen of the freezocalypse are merciless, grim, dark, bitter months – which is why Northern cultures since prehistory have organized big excessive festivals and holidays in them, because otherwise too many people would hibernate, go insane, and/or commit suicide.

Hence December with its put-on Christmas cheer, its casual holiday alcoholism, and its cozy nights with the family you have avoided most of the year even though you all love each other, supposedly. Hence... uh... Christmas, and the reason it's so big is because the corporate society we belong to has to keep us 'goal oriented' so that we don't drop out of their nonsense and discover actual meanings to life and think critically about the system we were born into and if any of it is actually right. But also, it keeps the shadows away, and turns darkness at 4:30 P.M. into 'coziness' as opposed to 'I viciously hate Daylight Savings Time'. And there's the religious significance, and the butt-hurt War on Christmas style rants from bigoted ignoramuses who think the LIBERAL LIBERATION FORCE are going to force them into sensitivity camps.

In December, the remembrance of the people we have to grudgingly buy gifts for (because they give us gifts and WILL judge us if we don't do the adult thing) will at some point cause us to enter that holy tabernacle of consumerism - the Christmastime store. It doesn't matter if it's a mall, a boutique shop, or even a corner store: get ready to hear some jingly, jangly Christmas cacophony that will probably make you feel worse even if you are mentally damaged enough to find joy in a season peoples from all over the southern world associate solely with the word 'forbearance'.

But that's all beside the point. Today I would like to compare the dreary cousins of December, two months that are important solely because they are months that people have to live through in order to get to classically 'good' months. November is proudly mediocre and even in a good year it's the month where the dying plants have mostly all died, the skies are grey and get a darker a bit more quickly each day, and any good weather is The Last Good Weather of the Year. February is colder, bleaker, and generally worse in every way, but it's also closer to the redemption of Late March, where the weather starts to feel amazingly fresh and the promise of life is in the air.

Let's see how these months compare:

Month	November	February
Temperatures	Warm enough for dampness, variable.	Bitter, skin numbing cold. Or 'mild cold'.
Light Levels	Dark, grey. Darker every day.	Mix of sun and overcast, lighter every day.
Weather Prospects	Declining rapidly.	Improving slowly.
Average Weather	Grey sky, rain, potential for wet snow.	Sunny, then cloudy, then snowy and cloudy. Then dark and snowy.
Public Mood	Increasingly resigned.	Cautiously optimistic.
Popular Pastimes	Watching stuff. Reading books. Hustling through cold streets. Getting over early season viruses. Puddle avoiding.	Skiing, snowboarding, sledding, sitting inside watching stuff. Suffering with late season viruses. Slush trudging.
Holidays	World Vegan Day, World Prematurity Day, International Men's Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday	World Wetlands Day, Groundhog Day, World Day of the Sick, Valentines' Day
Street Conditions	Wet and leafy. Risk of black ice.	Icy with slush. Risk of rainwater.
Risk of Weddings	Almost zero.	Essentially zero.

It looks like a tie, even to my trained eye, but there is lots of nuance. Both months are fairly miserable, and I think it would come down to personal preference, but I think no notherner of sound mind would prefer cold rain over snow. Cold rain is awful and the damp does not offer blissful numbness of pure sub-zero coldness. Plus there are no fun activities taking place in late-autumn/early-winter rain. Snow enables a lot of exciting and risky activities, and without them winter would be much worse.

Those holidays are hilarious but I am not 100% sure of the source. I'll go with them. Can you believe that there's an international Men's Day? And it's in the same month as World Prematurity Day, I'm sure a bad comedian somewhere can work a joke out of that. Valentine's Day, if it were as forced and emphasized as Christmas, would be hilariously spiteful towards single people. As it stands it only really riles up people who care, which is maybe a third of the population – most of whom I don't give a fuck about. World Day of the Sick - perfectly situated in the months, I'd say. Groundhog day is a non event for suckers, the superstitious, and children. World Vegan Day sounds like it's probably OK and in the worst case a good day to get some vegan chili or see what has happened in Meatless Meat Products since the last time you tried them. Black Friday sounds as turdilicious as it is. I wonder who came up with 'Cyber Monday' as a holiday name, or why it's even there. Probably some dumbass.

I would give my advantage to February – but for its insane bleakness. There is typically always one week of soul-crushing darkness and iciness. Not breaking an ankle moving around is somewhat of a challenge, and salt stains will get on every pant leg you can muster, which makes you look sloppy unless you are a freak who wears pants once between washings or has servants to do that for you. November typically is not quite so salty, there are chances for really nice weather, but there's less to do and one has to adjust to Daylight Savings which, if you haven't ever had to, is the brutal and unnecessary truncation of a day.

In which case I will call a tie. Both of the months suck. They are both shitty, and generally miserable. Neither has much of an advantage over the other, but thematically, being closer to spring is a more positive time, and being closer to Christmas is a sad, sad prospect. In conclusion: may god have mercy on our souls as we drift into the season.