November. It’s the start of the holiday season. It’s a time of year when temperatures drop and winter is just around the chilly corner. It’s a time to give thanks with family and friends.

It’s also the time for local men to ditch the shaving cream and razors, and let their beards grow free — for a good cause, of course.

It’s “No Shave November,” a challenge for men across the nation to stop shaving for an entire month. The premise of the initiative is that men who are growing a beard will be asked about it, which will give them the opportunity to say, “Yes, indeed, I’m growing a beard to raise awareness about cancer.”

One might think that cancer doesn’t need heightened awareness because everyone knows someone who has either survived or lost his or her battle with it. But the idea is to get people talking about it — the who, the what, the when, the options, the experiences — and remove the stigma, that unfortunately, remains attached to the disease.

In a recent Health column in the Washington Daily News, Dr. Robert McLaurin, a radiation oncologist at Marion L. Shepard Cancer Center, gave some cancer statistics that are pretty astounding. Forty years ago, he wrote, the cure rate for cancer was 25 percent. That means that then, three out of four people died from the disease. Those statistics have changed dramatically. In 2015, three out of four people diagnosed with cancer will live past that five-year survival mark, and there’s no reason to believe the cure trajectory won’t continue to improve.

So what’s changed? Research leading to better technology, more sophisticated treatment, more effective drugs, to start. But what’s also changed is awareness — a gradual breakdown of the barrier that prevents people from acknowledging early warning symptoms or taking part in recommended early detection programs. Cancer caught early is cancer that can be cured 95 percent of the time.

This is what “No Shave November” is really about: taking the whispered word “cancer” and making it part of the conversation, making it loud and clear that being proactive when it comes to cancer is a proven life-saver.

The “No Shave” challenge as issued by the Beaufort County Health Department has another facet. If it costs the average man 50 cents to a dollar to shave every day, by the end of November, each beard grower will have saved $15-30, which is money that can be donated to further the cause.

If 100 men participate, that’s $1,500-$3,000; 200, $3,000-$6,000; 500, $7,500-$15,000.

At the end of November, imagine that much money donated to Washington’s Marion L. Shepard Cancer Center and its support programs for those battling cancer or to the local the Relay for Life chapter, which supports cancer research.

It’s such a simple thing — not picking up a razor, but it could have such a big local impact.