My father and I have a long-running minor disagreement about which is the worst month. For me, it’s January. You’re back to work after Christmas. It’s still dark 16 hours a day. Spring is a long way off. Gooch père, meanwhile, awards the wooden spoon to February. It’s dank and grim and although it’s beginning to get a bit lighter, it’s been a very long time since you had any decent warm weather. I rather fancy he envies the swallows, who head off to Africa for the winter.
Occasionally I feel bad for finding the opening of the year rather depressing. Should I not, as a Catholic, take joy in all the seasons of the Church, even that brief window of Ordinary Time between the end of Christmastide and the start of Lent? Should my mood not be impervious to mere weather and the patterns of the secular year? I console myself with that glorious passage from Ecclesiastes, imploring us to remember that there is a time for every purpose under heaven. “A time for tears, a time for laughter, a time for mourning”. There is no religious obligation on Christians to maintain a forced upbeat cheeriness. If we’re feeling a bit lacklustre in the deep midwinter – the media often label the second Monday in January “Blue Monday” – then that’s all right.
