Nouveau November....

November can be a really down month. There's no real celebration, in Canada anyway, to create a focus. The US has Thanksgiving, however, we had ours in October, which also has Hallowe'en. For a long time November's only focus was Remembrance Day - not exactly an up day!!

Then along came some clever marketers!!!  Hurray! what would we do without entrepreneurs to whip up a campaign or two. I can see people sitting around a board room table saying, "OK, lets pick a month that has nothing and let's make it something." So now in November we have:

1. Movember - a focus for Prostate and Testicular Cancer. Now we can have contests at work for who can grow the best, the longest and/or the most creative moustache or something like that. Plus someone else has added themed mitts, as a fund raiser and I am sure, as the years progress, there will be other products and other events all geared to raise awareness of these Cancers. This will be the only time that I am sorry I can't grow a moustache :)

2. Beaujolais Nouveau - This limited offering of an unaged wine has really taken off!! The concept, which originally started in France, as a reward for the vineyard workers, has now become so popular that, if you don't get out and buy your bottles of Beaujolais Nouveau the first day they are released, you might not get any. In fact the idea is so popular that other countries are creating their own versions and there are also down market spin-offs.

The Wine of November

3. Nanowrimo - National novel writing month picked the best month to hold its write a novel of 50,000 words in 30 days challenge. I took the bait last year and "won" in the sense that I completed the challenge with an hour or two to spare on November 30, 2012. November has few distractions. It's mostly grey and cold, so you don't mind sitting in and finding something cerebral to do!! I know, now I have to polish the text and try to get it published - another November maybe :) I do, however, get to enjoy the blog posts of others in the challenge this year - those that are not too busy writing and can spare a post or two, that is!!

4. November 25 - I had always hoped that St Catherine's Day might have become more of an event. Something like an Easter parade only in November. We could even call it Covember. St Catherine's Day is celebrated mainly in France where single women in the needle trade - sewers, milliners etc send cards to each other. Milliners have huge parades and many Catherinettes wear spectacular hats as part of the fun. It has been retained in Quebec as Taffy Day. I'm not sure how the hats and cards morphed into taffy, but they apparently have :) Also some places in Britain light a Catherine Wheel - a flaming fireworks display. Maybe the female equivalent of Guy Fawkes Day - November 5.

5. Thanksgiving - Yes, we could always celebrate American Thanksgiving. That would mean turkey last month, turkey this month and turkey next month. Maybe a bit too much turkey :) Perhaps we could celebrate another type of food - how about Tortiere - national meat pie month? I think that it needs a little beefing up. :)

Have a wonderful November day!!