Can we please end this crazy cult that insists February is a spring month?

HAVE you heard the baby polar bear joke? You must have heard the baby polar bear joke! You know, the one with the punchline “Because I’m f****ing freezing.”

Well, here’s my variation on it, for the time of year that’s in it...

A small Irish child comes home from school in February and asks his mother if it’s really the springtime. Mom says: “Of course it is, honey! Now go do your homework before we have dinner.”

The next day, the small Irish child comes home from school and asks his grandfather if it’s really the springtime. Grandpa says: “Of course it is, kiddo! Now go do your homework before we have dinner.”

This happens every day for a week, with a different family member each day reassuring the child that spring really is here.

Finally, the child comes home from school and asks his father if it’s really springtime. Dad raises his voice. “Wait a minute. I heard you ask everyone in the house this question. Now you’re coming to me, so I have to know: why do you keep asking everyone if it’s springtime?”

The child replies: “Because I’m f***ing freezing!”

******

It happened again this week, regular as clockwork. February 1 rolled around after what appeared to have been the annual 50 days of January (I’m only exaggerating slightly) and the usual suspects were out of the blocks, proclaiming the arrival of spring.

It’s here: The month of hope! The month of rebirth!

And I get the impatience. I really do. I get that we’ve survived Christmas and the January slump, and we are just beginning to notice the bit of a stretch in the evenings. I get that a few daffodil stems are peeping up, and a few of their flowers are even making an early appearance.

I get that we are all looking forward to brighter, warmer, longer days ahead. I get it. But come on, that’s no excuse to annually lie to ourselves that winter is over and spring is here on February 1.

It isn’t. It really isn’t.

February is a winter month, and this is a hill I am prepared to die on - but not from hyperthermia, as I will still be wearing my big coat. Because it is STILL WINTER.

If we are to accept that each season roughly occupies three months, then the winter months are undeniably and indubitably December, January, and February.

Sure, there will be a little lapping over of the seasons in terms of temperatures and nature, but our climate doesn’t lie: The coldest months of the year, on average, are January and February. They are also the months when we are most likely to see snow.

Even if you were to suggest to me that our winters are short and only last for two months, and we had to take one of them away, I would be more inclined to remove December from the winter calendar than f***ing freezing February.

Decembers in recent years have been mild and almost autumnal, all the way up to Christmas. In fact, December, in my mind’s eye, is milder than March, never mind February!

Ask yourself: Would you rather go out and forget your big coat on Christmas Eve, or on St Patrick’s Day? I rest my case.

And if February really is a spring month, then that logically means May is a summer month, and that August is an autumn month. The whole thing is nuts!

But, no, every February 1, we are led to believe, through a blend of Celtic codology and Irish exceptionalism, that St Brigid is a harbinger of spring on her feast day. Balderdash!

Let’s be clear, it’s nice that we have a ‘mother saint’ of Ireland, and it’s nice that from 2023 her day will be a public holiday in the Republic of Ireland - the first one to be named after a woman. Yes, I appreciate the gender balancing at play here. But let’s not pretend any of us have a clue who Brigid was, or what she did.

Like with St Patrick, it’s just about feasible that these early saints lived among us, but anything else about them is a patchwork of hagiography, anecdotes and miracle tales, much of it written down (or invented) centuries after their alleged lives. Much of what we think we know about St Brigid is rooted in pagan folklore.

Yet we are prepared to take all this at face value and shoe-horn winter in a month earlier to accommodate her myth/legend.

Two of the most ancient references to ‘Brigid’ still dated to 125 years after her death - five generations in those days, and plenty of time for the Irish version of Chinese whispers to turn water into wine!

But still this stubborn refusal to see February as a winter month persists. Perhaps the best argument against this annual folly comes from Met Éireann.

Of course, the whole country bows to the meteorological experts when it comes to issues such as climate change. Anyone who has the slightest problem with their models on this serious issue, who dares to suggest they may be a tad on the doomsday side, is met with a chorus of unanimous disapproval from all and sundry: ‘Climate Change DENIER!’

But when the Met Office informs us, in line with our own expectations and experiences, that winter lasts from December to February, every year a sizeable bunch of people decide they have it wrong, and because of some ‘saint’ that may never have drawn breath, they are going to reject the science. We ought to label those people ‘Season DENIERS‘!

I know it shouldn’t rile me, and that worse things happen at sea, but it does. Every year. Someone, please make it stop.