People tend to not like January and February. They’re cold and dark. They have icy roads and dirty snow and runny noses and dry skin. They’re effectively the Monday of the year. And although March feels like a breaking point, true relief doesn’t come until at least the end of April, and that is far away. I get why people don’t like these months.

But I happen to love January and February. I feel this way for all of the annoying reasons people who feel this way say they do: it’s cozy, there is the possibility of snow and watching dogs play in it, there is no pressure to be particularly social, you can have a warm beverage, the cold air feels fresh. Annoying, yes, but I feel these reasons are legitimate. Plus I think a person needs miserable cold to fully appreciate the relief of spring. This is one of many reasons why people who live in Los Angeles are inferior both intellectually and with regard to their soul.

Again, though, I know most don’t agree. This is why I would like to propose a way by which people might make room in their hearts for the first two months of the year. The solution is: a new set of decorations that go up shortly after Christmas decorations are taken down and remain up throughout February.

The major decorating holidays are all stacked right at the end of the year: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. They happen to coincide with the year’s main holidays: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. The consolidation of holidays and decorations does well enough to boost spirits at the year’s end, but it greedily sucks up all the cool- and cold-weather joy before we even get to the hardcore, “worst” (best) part of the winter season. When we need decoration-related joy the most, we are left with nothing. It is remarkable we’ve put up with this for so long.

So, the plan I’m proposing is we do the new decorations. Their theme, in my opinion, should be light and the idea of happiness, or maybe “winter in general.” It is infuriating to me when people take down their exterior Christmas lights post-Christmas. Did we not need them anymore? Is it not still dark outside? Is it not still cold? I say — let’s put up even more lights after Christmas. And for the winter theme, maybe snowflakes, or snowmen. Pine needles. How the idea of happiness is expressed in decorations could be left up to individuals. Maybe for some, the idea of happiness means taking the Halloween decorations out again. I don’t object to that. Maybe for some it means putting up a very large, light-up, outdoor inflatable cookie. Perfect. I don’t care. If I had a house I would attempt to build a very large version of my dog in some sort of outdoor material, and then I would put lights on him.

Maybe you’re wondering whether adding another reason to buy things and use electricity unnecessarily is really something we should be doing. I don’t know. I’m feeling very grim in general and I don’t really have the energy to care about whether this idea is a net positive or negative in terms of capitalism and the environment, but I don’t really think it would be what’s gonna push us over the edge. Let’s move on.

Do these decorations need to be tied to a holiday? I don’t think so, and honestly I think it’s better to just think of them in terms of “January and February,” but when discussing this with my coworkers they had two ideas: that every location adopts the celebration of Mardi Gras, or that we attach decorations to Martin Luther King Jr. Day. I’m amenable to either of these, however I think something we’d have to consider is the idea of white people hanging up twinkle lights and putting out a big inflatable cookie in honor of Martin Luther King Jr. Though I guess if we choose Martin Luther King Jr. Day, the decorations could be Martin Luther King Jr. themed rather than themed as “the idea of happiness.” Still it could get dicey quickly. I’m not saying I have all of the solutions, I’m just saying there’s a problem we need to solve. Groundhog day could work. Large inflatable groundhog decorations, etc.

How do we begin to put this idea into action? Well, I kind of feel like I’ve done my part already by having the idea and writing this. It’s up to you now. Let’s get this going.