The holiday season revs up before Halloween, accelerates at Thanksgiving and is way over the speed limit by Christmas. There’s another small but intense surge before New Year’s. Then, it’s all over. Just like that. It’s dark, it’s cold. No more twinkly lights, no more parties. The Christmas trees are on the curb, and you are in the dumps.

I have two words for you: Robert Burns.

The beloved poet of Scotland has given people a reason to live through January. He was born on Jan. 25, and since his death in 1796 his life and literature have been celebrated around the world on that date at Robert Burns suppers.

There’s no Robert Frost supper, so why a Robert Burns supper? Burns was a hard-living man, and a few years after his death his close friends chose to honor him with an evening of things he loved: Scotch whisky and poetry. Besides, as Jean-Paul Sartre wrote, “To read a poem in January is as lovely as to go for a walk in June.”

My husband’s grandfather grew up in Scotland, so it is surprising, given that close connection to the land of the loch and glen, that I’ve never hosted a Burns supper. According to family lore, my grandfather-in-law was born in a building that had been one of Burns’s favorite brothels. You can’t get much more intimate with the Scottish bard than that. So this year I decided to embrace January and have a Burns supper. Given the many components, I needed a dry run.

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