My love for winter

So I know it’s not winter yet, but here in Wellington, it’s been raining non-stop for a week. Cyclone Dovi has just waded in too, so I’ve spent a fair bit of time drinking tea on my new corduroy sofa (am I an adult now?) and watching the fern in my front garden whip back and forth with no respite (poor thing, I wish I could invite it in for a warm drink). Although it’s February and should be warmer (though should is a strong word when it comes to Wellington), I am secretly quite thrilled.

I’ve always felt a total calm, joy and cosiness that whenever I think of winter, and that increases as the days finally start to shorten and the world retreats into the burrow of radiators and wooly hats. My fondness for winter goes back to a time before hygge and gezellig were trendy. My love for winter goes beyond trying to make it better through nights in with puzzles and glasses of red wine paired with creamy pasta sauce and garlic bread. It’s strange because I feel like the rest of the world gets a little sad when those nippy nights come a-knocking. I wondered if I was alone in that love; a couple of things I’ve heard recently have confirmed my love is shared by others.

The first was research by Kari Leibowitz, a researcher who went to the north of Norway (where it’s bloody cold and dark) to understand people’s mindsets about winter. You’d think people would be pretty depressed up there, with no light. But what she found was that, the further north people lived, the more they liked winter. When you think about it, it makes sense really. If it’s dark and cold and extremely wintery, you might as well make the most of it. Some aspects of people’s mindsets about winter included the beauty of winter, the uniqueness of winter activities, the cosiness (yes!), the soft light (how beautiful). This research speaks beautifully to the idea that winter is not something to be tolerated, but something to celebrate. It can be hard as, for many, winter brings up challenging experiences, feelings and thoughts, but I think one of the challenges is that it’s a more reflective time as there’s less immediate distraction, so painful feelings have a chance to arise. When we can sink into those, light a candle, wrap ourselves in a blanket and just be, we find that those feelings won’t actually swallow us whole.

The second thing that made me realise others love winter too was an episode of Poetry Unbound, by Pádraig Ó Tuama. In Poetry Unbound, Ó Tuama reads a poem and then discusses it (kind of like a compact English Literature class). This particular poem was about the beauty of dark, cold, snow and sadness. The beauty of the cycle of life, of leaves dying and being reborn again. Ó Tuama opens the episode by talking about his own love for Irish weather – the battering wind and rain, the moodiness of it all. I felt like I’d come home.

Here’s the poem:

i'm going back to Minnesota where sadness makes sense

o California, don’t you know the sun is only a god
if you learn to starve for her? i’m over the ocean

i stood at its lip, dressed in down, praying for snow.
i know, i’m strange, too much light makes me nervous

at least in this land where the trees always bear green.
i know something that doesn’t die can’t be beautiful.

have you ever stood on a frozen lake, California?
the sun above you, the snow & stalled sea—a field of mirror

all demanding to be the sun, everything around you
is light & it’s gorgeous & if you stay too long it will kill you.

it’s so sad, you know? you’re the only warm thing for miles
the only thing that can’t shine.