February -- it's a month so cold that it will never again be warm, so white that it will never again be green, so grim that you will never wrench your pale, mufflered carcass from the salt-pocked snowbank where you lie with a jar of VapoRub and a half-eaten box of Valentine's candy.

At least that's how February used to feel to James Norton, before he and Becca Dilley came up with the idea of celebrating Febgiving.

Febgiving is, at face value, a Thanksgiving feast in February. After all, why should the most delicious meal of the year be only an annual event?

But on a deeper and perhaps even metaphysical level, Febgiving illustrates the curative power of anticipation. "Once we started doing it, it's really become this wonderful thing that we look forward to," Norton said.

As do their friends. In fact, the Minneapolis couple are hosting two Febgivings this month to accommodate the 50 friends who are flying and driving in for the festivities.

"I didn't think anyone would ever come to Minnesota in February," Dilley said.

The idea is spreading. Friends who can't travel are hosting their own Febgivings in Washington, Illinois, California and Massachusetts. Now in its fourth year, "it feels like a real holiday," Norton said.

Febgiving follows in the footsteps of other semi-ironic invented holidays such as Festivus, best known as a story line on "Seinfeld," or Chrismukkah, best known as a story line on "The O.C." While thus far lacking such a pop-culture patron, Norton figures that "How I Met Your Mother" might be a good fit, "because it features a good core group of friends who are key to the dynamic."

That show also puts the "mother issue" on the table. Dilley, 29, never found February as gloomy as her spouse did, but embraced Febgiving because it finally gave her the chance to host a Thanksgiving meal. As the youngest child of a fabulous cook within a big Italian clan in Madison, Wis., she realized that the family gathering would never happen in Minneapolis.