Months, Ranked | Defector

Have you noticed how I’ve been yammering on about the month of August? If it’s not abundantly clear, I think August is a top-three month for inducing existential malaise. Sure, I will wish for August in February—but by May, I’m already dreading its arrival. There are two seasons with opening months that are very obviously better than their closing ones (fall, winter), and two where the closing month wins easily (spring, summer). But the calendar-designated beginning and ends of the official seasons very rarely exactly squares with the spiritual seasons. If we’re being real, spiritual winter runs from the top of December through early April; spring lasts from then through mid-May (or early June, if you’re lucky); spiritual summer starts sometime in June and ends, without exception, after the first week of September. Everything else is fall—even as the climate crisis is doing its best to convince us otherwise. (The ideal temperature range, by the way, is 65 to 72 degrees. A natural occurrence so fleeting in Brooklyn, that I will travel to find it.)

Sometimes people say, “Oh, your favorite or least favorite month probably also has something to do with your birthday month.” Not in my case! And just to be clear: loosely equating months with astrological signs and assuming that I feel the same way about those signs—ranked—would be foolish. (That’s for another day, perhaps.) The correct ranking of months, from best to worst, is as follows: