Culture

In a Word . . .

. . . January

Patsy McGarry's face
Patsy McGarry
Sat Jan 26 2019 - 00:00

There you are now, almost gone. This long-string-of-misery-of-a-month.

Is January the least-loved time of the year? Every year? If not, why not? With its long, slow drift through a tortuous frugality, following Christmas and New Year. A balancing-out after all the excess. The bills! The bills! The bills! Those shortest, darkest 31 days. All our trials, Lord. Soon be over.

Next Thursday, in fact.

The misery eased a bit for some last Thursday, when many people received their first pay packet of 2019. Meaner companies will wait until next Thursday, the very last of the month. They should be fined heavily and reminded that Scrooge has no place in January.

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Either of these latter Thursdays can also tend to be the first decent spending days of a new year, every year. When even the occasional taxi driver has been known to squeeze out a smile.

January is a peculiar month, caught between past and future in a limbo space, as light begins to edge out darkness with a barely discernible lengthening of the day. This slight progress is described as “cock steps”, an increase in the day comparable to the stride of a male chicken.

Such dominant darkness is why, generally, in our northern world it remains the coldest month, mixing cloves and hot whiskey to fend off colds and chills.

Then "when Blood is nipped and ways be foul". While "all aloud the wind doth blow/And coughing drowns the parson's saw/And birds sit brooding in the snow", according to Shakespeare's Winter.

But, there is celebration too. Elsewhere. Today is Australia Day. Down there where it is 'July' and the living is easy. January 26th marks the 231st anniversary of the British arrival at Sydney Cove in 1788.

It is an official public holiday in every state and territory of Oz.

But all is not sweetness and light on this day there either. Some indigenous Australians mourn January 26th as the anniversary of the invasion of their land by white Europeans. They object to its celebration as a national holiday. For some of them, January 26th is ‘Invasion Day’ or ‘Survival Day’.

January from the Latin Ianuarius for door (ianua). Also thought to be named after Janus, the Roman god of beginnings, gates and doors. His image has two faces, looking to the future and the past.

Latin IanuariusSydney Cove