I recently read an article in one of the national newspapers with the title ‘We need to talk about November’, where the idea is that basically that November is the worst month of the year.

I couldn’t agree more. I love December, the lights of Christmas and the expectation running up to it, and I’ve come to love October, with the moody, warmly-coloured orange atmosphere heading up to Halloween.

— Halloween wasn’t a thing in Norway when I was growing up, and I used to think it was a silly American thing that we were better off not importing, but it’s grown on me, I think because it’s a way to stave off the grey of winter a little bit longer.

So when Halloween is over, it’s November. November is grey, and cold, and every-day, there is nothing to look forward to and December seems an age away.

The article suggested various ways to deal with November, such as rebranding it into something positive and moving a couple of the holidays from April/May/June into November in lieu of having something like Thanksgiving already in place, or – my favourite – splitting November in two and sharing it between October and December. This would for example mean that Christmas Eve would fall on the 39th of December, which would mean that advent calendars would be 39 days long. Wouldn’t that be lovely?

But until someone official sees sense and implements this, I am left with the familiar way of coping called trying to see what beauty there is with my camera lens. As usual at this time of year, I’m moderately successful, which is good enough.

~ All the best from the Norwegian November darkness, Jenny G.