It's snowing pretty hard right now in Washington, D.C. Big, puffy flakes coming down outside my office window at a quick rate. It's supposed to continue for the rest of the day (unless it turns to rain when it warms up a little this afternoon).

This leads me to the following conclusion: Christmas should be in January or February.

I love Christmastime, and so does everyone else. But a big part of the whole Christmas spirit is imagery of cold and snow. Well, somtimes in some places I've lived it's been snowy in December, but it's actually always colder and snowier in January and February. Plus, by then, the cold and snow have set in for quite a while. In December, snow is still novel and fun. But in the new year, you start getting sick of it.

Celebrating Christmas on January 25 would offer two huge advantages: First, it would make the dreariness of the winter seem a little cheerier. When you sing about a "Winter Wonderland," snow doesn't seem so bad.* Second, it would ensure that there is, indeed, a winter wonderland to sing about (unless you live in a climate where it never snows at all, like Arizona, where if you're lucky you might get a cool breeze). In climates where it regularly snows each year, it doesn't always do so before December 25; it usually does by late January. We would thus assure ourselves of a white Christmas every year.

Plus, with the commercialization of Christmas trying to make the Christmas season longer and longer every year, we could extend the season so that it only has to compete with Martin Luther King Day, rather than Halloween.

Since there's no particular reason to celebrate Christmas on December 25 other than the fact that, if I recall correctly, Constantine's mom said so (we Mormons know better, though I admit that a springtime Christmas won't work thanks to the imagery and traditions we've already established over the last several hundred years), let's just put the thing off by a month or two. That way, I can be happy, not depressed, that it's snowing in January.

* I know: that song and many just like it ("Jingle Bells," "Let it Snow," "Baby It's Cold Outside," etc.) actually have nothing to do with Christmas, but as a practical matter we only sing them at Christmastime.