Red Orange Yellow Day

It’s January. The dead of winter.

Long ago, I had a terrific boss who insisted that every year the staff celebrate Red Orange Yellow Day. I’m not sure if he made it up, or if there really is such a thing. The celebration was always held in the third week of January, a month famous for gray skies, dirt-speckled snow, and cold toes.

I guess the idea was to brighten everyone up through the mid-winter blues, and it certainly was effective. Every on the staff wore the requisite colors and shared a pot-luck lunch of salsa, ziti, orange juice, rainbow sherbet, lemon meringue pie and what-have-you. Every year one renegade brought guacamole. After lunch we all needed Alka-Seltzer. Didn’t matter–our hearts were brightened up.

Anyway, I think there’s something to his theory, even without the ziti and the pie. There’s really some psychological research out there that points to bright colors being effective in elevating mood and battling depression. It’s all about light, light and color–that’s what we’re starved for, even more than warmth, in this bone-chilling cold winter.

So here’s a botanical rainbow: red, orange and yellow to to brighten your day.