The January Thaw

By all accounts, Merle Haggard is an idiot. In his classical country and western masterpiece If We Make It Through December, he refers to December as "the coldest time of winter." This is blatantly false. For one thing, Winter doesn't officially start until the winter solstice, usually occurring sometime between December the 20th and and December the 23rd. If December were the coldest time of Winter, then why is most of it not even in Winter at all?

So his thesis is clearly resting on shaky ground, but let's look at some data to really elucidate the scenario. To give ole' Merle the benefit of the doubt, lets look at the climate of his home state of California:

City	Jan	Dec	Which is coldest?
Bakersfield	57/39 (14/4)	57/38 (14/3)	December
Bodie	40/6 (4/−14)	41/6 (5/−14)	January
Death Valley	67/39 (19/4)	65/38 (18/3)	December
Eureka	56/42 (13/6)	55/41 (13/5)	December
Fresno	55/39 (13/4)	55/38 (13/3)	December
Los Angeles	69/50 (21/10)	68/49 (20/9)	December
Sacramento	54/39 (12/4)	54/39 (12/4)	Tie
San Bernardino	62/34 (17/1)	63/37 (19/3)	January
San Francisco	58/46 (14/8)	58/47 (14/8)	Tie
San Jose	61/42 (16/6)	61/42 (16/6)	Tie
South Lake Tahoe	42/16 (6/−9)	42/17 (6/−8)	January

So in four places in California, December is the coldest month, in three places January is the coldest month, and in three places they tie. This is hardly conclusive evidence that December is the coldest month. If Merle Haggard had written "Either December or January is the coldest month of the year, depending on where you live in the Northern Hemisphere," then there wouldn't be much to argue about. Instead, he chose to write lies.

Fun Fact:
Did you know that people in the Southern hemisphere call summer winter, and vice versa? Crazy, eh?

Anyways, the point of all this is that December gets a bad rap and that January is actually the most brutal, wicked, nasty, and all-around unbearable month of the year. Your average january day involves prying yourself out of bed with an epic feat of willpower, sprinting to a lukewarm shower along icy-cold floors, a constant cycling of ingesting hot liquids and the subsequent urination, and a jail-like life of cold weather captivity. Some fools develop cold weather Stockholm syndrome, and take to activities like skiing and ice skating. Rest assured that these people are suffering from a mental illness, and should seek treatment from a doctor.

January weather does have one redeeming quality: there is usually a January Thaw. This refers to a span of days when the warmth of the heavens opens up to proclaim:

FEAR NOT MORTALS. HOPE IS ALIVE.

The effect of this is a buoying of spirits and jubilation in the streets anywhere cold weather is feared.