This is the question: To turn on the heat or not

Handknit wool socks

It's October in the eternally cold state of Minnesota (well, that's what we let them think.)  The dilemma among the ladies at the knitting group (yes, we knit wool socks to keep warm) tonight was "Did you turn on the heat yet?"  Only hardy souls like those in Minnesota would actually discuss whether it was cold enough to turn on the heat. (The low yesterday evening was in the 40's Fahrenheit.)  Actually, I haven't turned the furnace on officially even though my nose is cold and even my fingers are a bit numb as I type this.  Where does this hesitation to warm up the house come from?  Okay, I must admit that I have tried to warm up my immediate vicinity by making a fire in our fireplace the last two evenings to warm up the living room and then sitting in the easy chair immediately adjacent to it with my  knitting in hand . . . but the bedrooms are cold, for sure.  Let me make a stab at why this is even a topic.

Here is my thinking on the reasons:
We spend a lot of time sitting in natural gas-heated rooms--approximately five or six months or more (depending on whether you turn the furnace off in April or not--but that's another blog).  We just don't want to start drying out our nasal passages this early.
Maybe we just like to feel chilly so that we do have to put on all those self-striping wool socks and Icelandic sweaters that we knit. I quote a woman at knitting tonight, "I'd rather be cold than hot."  Spoken by a true Minnesotan.
Or could it just be that we like to boast that we have NOT TURNED THE FURNACE ON YET to our friends as a kind of badge of honor.  We like to boast that we are tough Minnesotans and can cheerfully endure endless months of cold and snow, no, deep cold and deep snow.  (Well, maybe I do exaggerate a bit on the "cheerfully" part.)  But you get what I mean.
I think I am putting an end to this as I just experienced an internal shiver while proofreading this blog.  I'm turning on the furnace; let the sinuses begin to dry up. Wait, maybe I could just plug in the space heater in the bedroom and wait until November to turn on the furnace?
Where do you stand on this quintessential question of this season?