Instead of answering your question, what I written down below turned into ,,tips for ES", so eh, sorry for that, but it remains relevant. To give more of a solid answer, I will just say ,,both quality and quantity, and here is how".
The problem with bigger events is that they are hit or miss - for both community and the ES team. The amount of work some of them require is staggering (case in point, Battle of classes from couple of years back we ran when I was still part of the team - you could easily spent several hours counting the duels down, controlling who dropped out when or if he's still playing, answering questions from the players and all that jazz - it was a chore).
As Icky pointed out, November is usually ,,less interesting", given it is a month between Halloween and Christmas, with holidays and exams for some people. However, as good of excuse that it, it is not enough. Hosting groups are prone to the chronic short sightedness when it comes to HR - events are being planned some time ahead but people to run those events or just doing the groundwork (in-game hosting, support coverage, in-game presence) are disregarded. For example, the current recruitment - good decision, of course, but one taken too late - most of the work that needs to be done will still fall on the current members of the team, as trials have to learn first (unless, of course, you manage to headhunt some experienced old-timers). Of course, there is also an issue of potential - there are times at which getting decent people for the people is difficult. Therefore, it should be crucial to keep a shortlist of good candidates and check on them, whether they stay active in the community or not, so you can get them in relatively quickly. Disregarding people that could have made it but didn't due to other people being recruited instead, as soon as the newest drive is over, doesn't work.
On the other hand, the concepts for Halloween and Christmas events are pretty well established, by the work of my and earlier generetions of staff. Improvements have to happen, of course, but it is not much of a stretch to expect something from the team in-between those two periods of time, as the base is pretty solid - therefore, quantity outside of the preperations for Christmas is important, especially with the in-game stuff.
I do recall the ,,how to host/do forum events" threads and guides in ES HQ we made being relatively well put together - perhaps you could expand on those, if you haven't already, into the realm of quick to prepare ,,instant" events - simple stuff that a willing member of the team could do almost on the spot, by changing some variables in the thread and posting it as is, with less jaw-dropping prizes and short deadlines (f.ex. up to 5 days). That would create a certain dynamic in the events board, changing it's sorry state in between the big events.
Another thing I conceptualized but didn't get to introduce and implement when I was still in the team, was a think-tank for the creation of forum events. Such group would consist of ex-staffers and active memebers of the community, interested in helping out. Certain level of discretion would be recquired, not to spoil the contents of the discussed events too soon, however without any mind-blowing recquirements to actually join the group, with the exception of the memeber limit at given time - up to 10 people. The group would operate in a special board, but without access to any staff boards, as it isn't needed and would only make a possibility of some leaks more likely. Their aim would be to create and prepare [PROP]s of interesting events, that a member of ES could take and host without having to conceptualize it him/herself - taking some load off the ES (some people, while good at in-game hosting, can't for the love of them sit down for 30-40 minutes and write down an ok-ish event [PROP]).
Inactive people would be removed quickly, making place for the new ones. Such ,,database" of possible events would come in handy in situation such as the current one.
Staff would obviously oversee the group, giving CnC, giving ideas, sometimes letting the group know in what direction to look, as events of this or that theme might be happening in the future, but for the most part they would simply do their ,,job" by coming up with ,,hosting-worthy" and ,,hosting-ready" events, widening the hosting possibilites for the ES. Of course, if an event created by the member of the group was used, all the people that worked on it would get their due credit in the event thread.