Hooray! It’s January!

There’s a phrase that doesn’t get out much. Apart from a few selfish oddballs believing it’s acceptable to celebrate birthdays during a month when most people are catastrophically skint, everyone hates January.

January: often 31 days of abject asceticism.

January: when the single worthwhile day (New Year’s Day) is ordinarily spent enduring a hellish headache and a constitution more wobbly than a Cheryl Cole live vocal.

January: the month when televisual temazepam Dancing On Ice cumbersomely triple-axels back onto our screens.

January: so bad, the year can only get better.

How best should we avoid the gaping, unappealing maw of the first month?

My preferred January-avoidance technique would be hibernation, which works perfectly well for most sensible mammals – regrettably, having unsuccessfully suggested this to my employers, I’ve had to turn to Plan B.

Thankfully, this Plan ‘B’ stands for ‘brilliant’ and not ‘bobbins’, ‘bunkum’ or ‘balls’.

It’s a plan that works for me, for Birmingham and, more than likely, for the entire world.

Let’s move Christmas to the end of January.

Look out of the window. It’s beautiful out there. Revel in those pristine snowscapes. Shed a joyful tear as you witness children cavorting crunchily through the snow to create their first snowman.

Smile cheerily as intermittent bus services allow you to appreciate the bracing cold for a little while longer.

Then cast your mind back to December 25. Think of the weather. Drab, wasn’t it? Drabber than the Queen’s speech. Made Noel nondescript. A bit Christmeh.

We need to accept facts: It doesn’t snow in December any more. It does snow in January.

If you don’t believe me, which you should, believe the Met Office: its own website states “looking at climate history, wintry weather is more likely between January and March than December.”

Ergo, if we really do dream of a white Christmas, let’s do what we can to make it happen. Let’s make Christmas happen on January 25.

As you’re currently reading a business column, you may be unnerved by the lack of actual business content up to this point.

Should this be the case, consider yourself re-nerved. There are practical commercial reasons Christmas should be nudged into the following month.

There have been reports this week of how the UK is now facing the threat of a triple-dip recession.

Closer to home fellow columnist Jerry Blackett warned on the front page of this week’s Birmingham Mail that snowmageddon could cost the region’s economy more than £50 million a day.

It’s unsurprising news: no-one’s in the mood to shop in Boux Avenue at The Bullring when you’re sporting frayed thermals underneath 17 other layers of clothing; industrial productivity plummets when staff stay at home, unable or unwilling to play the ‘Dude, Where’s My Bus And/Or Train Service?’ game; school closures mean even more stay-at-home staff, as well as dramatically increased viewing figures for CBeebies.

Our fragile economy can’t be doing with staff not producing things and the public not buying things.

Therefore, in future, how can we mitigate for such a predicament?

We move Christmas to when the weather is most likely to be awkward.

Everything shuts down for Christmas anyway, so school closures and unpredictable commuting would be nullified in the instance of white, fluffy stuff from the sky.

We move Christmas but keep the sales promotions where they are: bricks and mortar retailers have bleated about the unfair playing field online retailers operate on – it’s this perceived inequality that’s contributed to HMV, Comet, Jessops and Blockbuster’s demise. So why not change the playing field?

We can retain the traditional post-December 25th discounting push, but aggressively market it as the cost-effective, austerity-friendly way to buy your (January) Christmas presents.

Re-emphasise the benefits of touchy-feely browsing, but hammer home the fact buying in store saves you the wait on delivery, and reduces unnecessary faff in returning unsatisfactory items.

Here’s another way of looking at this: if certain high street retailers had given the hard sales push before the financial year end, could they have averted the dreaded January visit from the administrators?

We move Christmas and we even give the betting industry a boost: taking a punt on a white Christmas would become infinitely more attractive if you actually thought a white Christmas was remotely possible.

Now, lest I’m accused of not understanding the sacred meaning of Christmas, I need to make this clear: I am aware of the baby Jesus. I love the work of the Three Wise Men. I fully appreciate the religious heft behind Christmas, and that it is not to be disregarded.

But would a change in date jeopardise the true meaning of the Nativity?

I dunno. Maybe it would. Don’t know much theology.

But I do know there’s no conclusive evidence as to when Jesus was born – therefore, I’m going to stick with my fanciful date-shifting notion.

Thankfully, I have political precedent to back my ambitious plan to move the immovable.

Admittedly, this precedent was set in 1969 by Conservative MP Roger Gresham Cooke, and his proposal to nudge Yuletide from its December 25th perch led to, um, no change whatsoever. No matter.

He clearly wasn’t half as convincing as I intend to be. I’m so certain a change in Santa-time will hugely benefit our country, I’m tempted to give David Cameron a call, advise him to bin the Euro agenda and recommend he hops onto the January Christmas bandwagon/sleigh-ride.

So you read it here first: January 2014 – say goodbye so-called ‘Blue Monday,’ say hello White Christmas!

If you read it anywhere second, I’ll be deeply flattered. And surprised.

* Keith Gabriel is a Birmingham PR executive