Fairy lights that lit up streets, doors and windows of houses and shops, reindeer sleigh and Santa Clause that gave the common area of every shopping mall a festive appearance, and holiday tunes that filled the air of cafés and diners are now gone for a year. In contrast to October, November, December, and the first day of January when Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year are celebrated respectively by most Americans, January is not only colder-grayer but also quiet and uneventful.
Whether you want to partake in the above-mentioned festivals or not, if you live in the West, their festivies will touch you in one way or another. Come October, you see Halloween costumes and Halloween-themed home decor, food, and much more all around you. Your child’s school might even hold a Halloween parade on campus. And on October 31, you will have kids trick-or-treating at your doorstep. I am not a Halloween fan but usually buy small treats to give out to kids who knock on the door.
November is festive a month because of Thanksgiving Day, which is celebrated on the fourth Thursday of November across the United States. Although Thanksgiving has its historical roots in religious traditions, it has long been celebrated as a secular family holiday as well; it is a time to meet with your loved ones, make beautiful memories, and enjoy a hearty Thanksgiving meal. Traditional dishes like baked whole Turkey, green bean casserole, mashed potato, dinner rolls and butter, gravy, and cranberry sauce are enjoyed in the company of one’s immediate and extended families. Unlike other fall and winter time celebrations, Thanksgiving is more popular because Americans celebrate it regardless of their race and religion.
“Oh! Jingle bells, jingle bells
Jingle all the way
Oh, what fun it is to ride
In a one-horse open sleigh, hey”
Perhaps one of the most popular Christmas tunes, you can hear it at shops, cafés, diners, even healthcare facilities. Although inherently a religious holiday, Christmas has now evolved as a secular family holiday celebrated by non-Christians, minus the Christian elements. Marked by decorating Christmas tree at home, lighting up the house indoor and outdoor, and exchanging gifts with friends and family, many non-Christians also join in on Christmas festivities.
Then after celebrating the first day of a brand new year, everything quietly turns gray, cold, and then colder. January is the coldest month of the year here in Delaware and much of America’s East.
With fairy lights and holiday decorations gone and seasonal merchandise and edibles missing on the store shelves, January is mundane; there is nothing festive about the first month of the year.
January is the month when people like me, who fare well in warm weather, start looking forward to the arrival of spring, when bare branches will dress in green, cherry blossoms will brighten parks and streets, and I will be awakened by songbirds every morning. In short, there will be signs of life everywhere I look and everywhere I go. Although spring is still three months away, it is the only thing I look forward to as we step into January.
I am especially homesick during this time of the year. It is the time when the past floods into the present. Sitting by the window and gazing at the gray January world, I reminisce about the two-and-a-half decades I lived in Dhaka. Looking at my neighbour’s cat chasing a wild squirrel in the snow, I think of the marigolds and roses that are blooming right now on my mother’s balcony. I smell bhapa, puli, and patishapta in the air, although they are being prepared in a kitchen 12,000 kilometres away. I also hear Bismillah Khan’s shehnai in my mind; when I was a child, a Biye or Bou Bhat was incomplete without the melodious sound of shehnai filling the atmosphere. And, winter was (and still is) the most popular season for deshi weddings.
The string of my thoughts is suddenly severed by a loud knock on the front door. Our postwoman always knocks on the door when she leaves a package. I return to my world, where it is a frigid-quiet-mundane day of January. I wrap myself with a Pashmina shawl for extra warmth and descend the stairs to see what has arrived in the package.
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