January can be a cold, hard month. It’s the depth of winter here in our parts… the harshest season usually being New Year’s Day through Valentine’s Day.
Not only that, but it’s an unrelieved season. In two months we gallop through the public revelry of Halloweeen, Thanksgiving, Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Eve – plus all their attendent shopping, movies, TV shows, costumery, parades, and more.
True, New Year’s DAY is also a holiday, but mostly it’s just a day off to gird your loins before returning to the grind; unless you’re in Pasadena, there’s probably not much actually going on. And there WON’T be, holiday-wise, until Easter, because Valentine’s Day, pleasant though it may be, just doesn’t cut it as a major holiday. Nor, indeed, does Epiphany on January 6. In our own time, though, February’s Super Bowl Sunday has emerged as a major festive (and secular) holiday.
January is named for Janus, the uniquely Roman god of avenues, gates, and doorways. He has an old face gazing backward, and a young face looking forward. He highlights those places and times in which we transition from one thing to another. “Ring out the old, ring in the new. Ring out the false, ring in the true.”
In most all consumer businesses, January is a down time after the boom sales of Halloween through New Year’s. The quiet can actually be welcome, but the retailer needs to plan ahead for the lower income. Even supermarket business goes down, in spite of the fact that people still need to eat. I guess we’ve all got a lot of leftovers.
Our local tourism business shrinks almost to nothing, given that we don’t have any near-at-hand winter sports venues. Places like Swain and Bristol Valley, on the other hand, love January, assuming the weather cooperates.
Some of our “snowbird” friends left a month or more back, while others stuck it out through Christmas. By now they’ve just about all scampered to the south.
January (and February) of 1940 saw huge snow storms, repeatedly dumping a foot or two. The girls at Davenport orphanage went to school by sleigh for a week.
Ice fishing is big in January, just as ice cutting USED to be, in the days before reliable electricity. Parts of Keuka and Seneca Lakes often freeze over, especially in Keuka’s shallower Branches. Waneta Lake sometimes freezes thick enough for auto races.
January of 1996 saw heavy snow, followed by melt, followed by freeze, followed by heavy rain. Followed, unsurprisingly, by extensive floods, especially in Kanona, Corning, and Campbell.
Just after midnight on January 3, 1877, fire was discovered at the Arcade Restaurant on Pine Street in Corning. Trouble at the pumping station cut off the water supply, and the fire soon roared from Market Street to what we now call Dension Parkway. The restaurant, three clothing stores, a grocery, and a tobacco shop were lost. Erie Railroad station, a dry-goods store, and a lawyers’ office were damaged.
Less than three weeks later, on January 23, snow crushed the roof of Zion African Methodist Episcopal Church, wrecking the building, a former Corning schoolhouse, beyond repair. Five feet and four inches of snow had fallen since the last thaw, and country roads were snowbound on every hand.
In January of 1908 Glenn Curtiss and his friends were designing their first airplane. On New Year’s Day 1911 he and his wife drove an electric car in the Rose Parade, taking a break from seaplane experiments at San Diego.
January also honors the birth of a great American, Dr. Martin Luther King. It’s more a day for reflection and action, though, rather than a time of revelry. But there’s no reason for gloom in January. The days are getting noticeably longer, and you don’t need Madison Avenue to tell you when it’s holiday time. No one else can MAKE you happy. You can do that for yourself! Take a day, or an evening, or a weekend, plan ahead, and do what makes YOU happy. Enjoy your January!