May and December

Used to describe a romantic relationship in which one person is much younger than the other. The age of the younger person is likened to May, which marks the beginning of spring, while the age of the older person is likened to December, which comes late in the year and marks the start of winter. Everyone in his family had reservations about his May and December relationship, but eventually they realized that the love between him and his older wife was genuine. I know a May and December romance may not seem like a big deal right now, but you've got to think about the complications you might encounter down the line.

December, May and

A marriage between a young and a much older individual. This disparity was called January and May by Chaucer, January standing for the hoary frosts of old age and May for the young breath of spring. In Chaucer’s The Merchant’s Tale the young girl, May, marries January, a baron aged sixty. This fourteenth-century idea was transformed into December and May by the early 1600s (although January and May survived as well). December, of course, is not only cold but also comes at the end of the calendar year and so may provide a better analogy for late in life. “You doe wrong to Time, enforcing May to embrace December,” wrote Thomas Dekker (The Seven Deadly Sinnes of London, 1606).