Ah yes the Java Date discussion, again. To deal with date manipulation we use Date, Calendar, GregorianCalendar, and SimpleDateFormat. For example using your January date as input:

Calendar mydate = new GregorianCalendar();
String mystring = "January 2, 2010";
Date thedate = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM d, yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH).parse(mystring);
mydate.setTime(thedate);
//breakdown
System.out.println("mydate -> "+mydate);
System.out.println("year   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.YEAR));
System.out.println("month  -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MONTH));
System.out.println("dom    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH));
System.out.println("dow    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK));
System.out.println("hour   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR));
System.out.println("minute -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MINUTE));
System.out.println("second -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.SECOND));
System.out.println("milli  -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MILLISECOND));
System.out.println("ampm   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.AM_PM));
System.out.println("hod    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));

Then you can manipulate that with something like:

Calendar now = Calendar.getInstance();
mydate.set(Calendar.YEAR,2009);
mydate.set(Calendar.MONTH,Calendar.FEBRUARY);
mydate.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH,25);
mydate.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY,now.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));
mydate.set(Calendar.MINUTE,now.get(Calendar.MINUTE));
mydate.set(Calendar.SECOND,now.get(Calendar.SECOND));
// or with one statement
//mydate.set(2009, Calendar.FEBRUARY, 25, now.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY), now.get(Calendar.MINUTE), now.get(Calendar.SECOND));
System.out.println("mydate -> "+mydate);
System.out.println("year   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.YEAR));
System.out.println("month  -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MONTH));
System.out.println("dom    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH));
System.out.println("dow    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK));
System.out.println("hour   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR));
System.out.println("minute -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MINUTE));
System.out.println("second -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.SECOND));
System.out.println("milli  -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MILLISECOND));
System.out.println("ampm   -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.AM_PM));
System.out.println("hod    -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));

Use java.util.Calendar.

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.clear();
cal.set(Calendar.YEAR, 2011);
cal.set(Calendar.MONTH, 1);
cal.set(Calendar.DATE, 1);
Date predefined = cal.getTime();

Date now = new Date();

if (now.after(predefined))
{
    // do something
}
else
{
    // do something else
}

or use JodaTime.

How to compare two dates? I really don't know why it's so complicated to do.

Because calendars/dates/times are really hard to get right, and the Java implementation of Date (and, in part Calendar) is an utter train wreck.

"mm" means the "minutes" fragment of a date. For the "months" part, use "MM".

So, try to change the code to:

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy"); 
Date startDate = df.parse(startDateString);

Edit: A DateFormat object contains a date formatting definition, not a Date object, which contains only the date without concerning about formatting. When talking about formatting, we are talking about create a String representation of a Date in a specific format. See this example:

    import java.text.DateFormat;
    import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
    import java.util.Date;

    public class DateTest {

        public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
            String startDateString = "06/27/2007";

            // This object can interpret strings representing dates in the format MM/dd/yyyy
            DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy"); 

            // Convert from String to Date
            Date startDate = df.parse(startDateString);

            // Print the date, with the default formatting. 
            // Here, the important thing to note is that the parts of the date 
            // were correctly interpreted, such as day, month, year etc.
            System.out.println("Date, with the default formatting: " + startDate);

            // Once converted to a Date object, you can convert 
            // back to a String using any desired format.
            String startDateString1 = df.format(startDate);
            System.out.println("Date in format MM/dd/yyyy: " + startDateString1);

            // Converting to String again, using an alternative format
            DateFormat df2 = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy"); 
            String startDateString2 = df2.format(startDate);
            System.out.println("Date in format dd/MM/yyyy: " + startDateString2);
        }
    }

Output:

Date, with the default formatting: Wed Jun 27 00:00:00 BRT 2007
Date in format MM/dd/yyyy: 06/27/2007
Date in format dd/MM/yyyy: 27/06/2007