I think you should of given a manual firefly as well.
I never managed to finish the October event, but then the months just continued by without sending me back again. In-game now it's February and I'm not getting any firefly to send me back for the winter events.
My current theory is that, because I never finished the October event, the game doesn't want to interrupt the "ongoing" event (even though I can't finish it since I'm to far away now), so my only option is to spend an in-game year doing nothing until both events come around again, which... isn't ideal.