Well, there's more than naive optimism behind my "december looks promising" remark.
I figure that as we transition from secondary season to interview season, schools are going to send out their first wave of invites to the most attractive candidates. So, out of the secondaries they recieve, they'll probably stack up the people who are most attractive and schedule interviews into the fall. Everyone else gets to wait.
As the months pass, and the top candidates get interviewed, they'll accept a few and go back to square one. So we go back over the remnants of the original pool from august plus any late arrivals, and schedule interviews into the spring. There is probably a lull in interviews over the holidays, so it's a good time to send out invitations for Jan-March.
Things could be a bit more staggered, so it won't seem so much like a wave as a gradual high tide. Also, the adcoms could possibly meet over thanksgiving and try to squeeze out a few more interviews in december if they haven't already scheduled anything.
So anyway, this is my prediction, December looks like a good month. That's the bet I'm placing. (But I'm often wrong.)