October, November, December, the most wine-soaked time of the year. It can make or break a wine shop, bar, or restaurant, really any business whose currency is empty bottles. We see evidence of it in search trends. Wine-related queries slump in the dog-days of July but rise sharply through October, hitting peak frenzy on December 31. After that they fall precipitously as the Resolutionaries swear off wine then (try to) sweat off excess.
The start of this period neatly coincides with the harvest in the Northern Hemisphere. It’s a season of rituals and celebrations born to mark the wheel of the year. The Celtic pagans lit bonfires on Samhain, the final night of October, to honor autumn’s end and to consort with the ancestors when the veil between the worlds of the spirits and the living was thinnest. Christians tacked All Souls’ Day onto the observations, and these holidays have since collapsed into one another in the spooky secular mess that is Halloween.
Next there is Thanksgiving, a feast the Pilgrims did not invent and whose origin story mixes reverence with colonial mindset, forever coloring my take on the narrative. But there is no doubt a harvest meal is necessary after we’ve moved indoors to the joys of a well-stocked pantry.
By mid December we’re swirling in Christmas and Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, while the remaining pagans among us observe Solstice, the longest, darkest night but also the return toward light (it’s also my birthday, lucky me). Finally, we steam full throttle into New Year’s Eve and New Year’s Day before staggering, exhausted but content, into the beginning of the year.