Too Cold

December: The month of my birth. What a disappointment it is! One would hope that the month of one’s birth would be a time of sunshine and warmth. A time of blossoming flowers and trees with ripening fruit. Instead, we have 

That time of year . . .

When yellow leaves, or none, or few, do hang

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold.

(Shakespeare, “Sonnet 73”)

It should be a time of joyous music—and it is, except when glorious “Ding, Dong, Merrily On High” is countered by multiple playings of Alvin and the Chipmunks.

It is also the time, because it is the last month of the year, that every magazine, newspaper, media maven must render a list: The 46 best books of the year; the 27&1/2 best movies; the 1800 best TV shows.

It behooves every dictionary publisher to announce its own “Word of the Year,” and for newspapers to react as if they have heard the word of God. Actually, to prove that there is no celestial blessing being conferred lexically, even non-dictionary types get into the act: “The Economist’s word of the year for 2024”; “Sorry, Oxford dictionary nerds. This is the real word of the year” (Washington Post).

Then again, in December we have the prognostications for the new year (none of which will, of course, come true). 

But for me, the worst pronouncement that December brings forth is that of the color of the following year. That is the chutzpadik doing of a company named Pantone. They in their own little way determine what the next year is all about (and the dopey media listens to them). Here’s what they say about 2025:

Pantone's Color of the Year is meant to capture the zeitgeist, said Laurie Pressman, vice president of the Pantone Color Institute. At the same time, it's also intended to serve as a cultural antidote.

"It's emblematic of a snapshot in time and it's giving people what they feel they need — that that color can hope to answer," Pressman said. "It's us taking the temperature: What's taking place in the world around us and how does that get expressed into the language of color?"

"And as we were doing our research for this year, what we were really seeing more than anything is people looking for harmony and living a life of harmony," she said, and a need to feel "grounded." *

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Well, keep your zeitgeist! I declare that the color of the year will be chartreuse.

And I’ll drink to that! 

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* https://www.npr.org/2024/12/05/nx-s1-5203003/pantone-mocha-mousse-color-of-year