Winter is not my favorite season. Any of the other three qualify as “my favorite” while I’m living in their midst, or longing for them. Perhaps this is why – as much as I love autumn, I hesitate to wish for its arrival, knowing the chapter that comes afterwards, so long and cold and bleak after the brief flame of fall. Summer as well, the succession of those perennials showing us how swiftly the season passes, its fleeting nature exacerbated as a symbol of freedom with its bare feet and its hammocks and its shores. But I long for spring, and I think that longing interferes with my appreciation for winter. It’s not the season itself, it’s the duration. I know I would miss it. Winter is visually the loveliest season. As much as I adore gardens and their summer flowers, the tenderness of spring, the blaze of fall, winter is the prettiest time of year. Currier and Ives most inviting paintings illustrate our winters.
The first frost reminds us of the magical quality of the cold, powdering seed pods and golden rod fronds, riming the branches of briars and shrubs. Like jewels strewn across the world, the blades of grass, the rims of fallen leaves, glisten in the morning sun soon to melt the fragility, leaving us to anticipate the first snowfall. It’s always an exhilarating occasion. Softly swirling snowflakes falling gently, silently, mesmerizing us with a lacey delicacy and an incomparable peace. We allow ourselves to live in the moment when the first snowfall of the season visits us, rediscovering, momentarily, the wonder of our childhoods.
We watch as the snow accumulates. Spattering the seams of stone paths and stonewalls, creating a mosaic of white and gray and the greens of mosses and lichens, dusting the garden’s dried remains – rubdeckia becoming sugared gumdrops, sedums holding saucers of snow, sages turning into plump sculptures. Confetti sprinkling the limbs of trees, frosting the branches of evergreens, filling the twiggy baskets of shrubbery, the snow’s brush slowly illustrating New England’s legendary “Winter Wonderland”. We venture into this realm to scatter seeds for the birds, and to enjoy it. For while there’s nothing as peaceful as walking in the woods, enveloped with the silence of snowfall and the scent of pine, there is nothing as invigorating as playing in it afterwards. As alluring as it is, we leave the pristine surface unblemished until it’s marked with the footprints of rabbits, criss-crossed with the swift travels of deer.
Though the “Snow Globe” world of blizzards isn’t as embraced as the gentler versions, such storms result in a singular feeling of coziness not quite realized in other weathers. We live on our islands, the blinding, slippery, drifting conditions preventing us from leaving our homes. While the whirling white surrounds us, with hot cocoa, hearths, robes, blankets, good books, we tuck ourselves in. The snow spins and swirls, slants and sifts, splatters the window panes, thickens. Visibility lessens. The wind whirs, rattles, howls. Drifts mound, white waves across a white ocean, white sands sifting across a white shore. And when it ends, the sun soars into winter’s signature azure sky, sparkling the snow, brightening the ruby berries, the streaks of cardinals, the blizzard leaving a field of diamonds in its wake, dazzling us.
Light plays such an integral role in winter and its landscape. There are few things as breathtaking as sunshine after an ice storm. The world glitters. Sunlight polishes the trunks of trees, their branches glazed with ice, reaching and curving to host the slimmer twigs splayed across the sky like iridescent lace. Weeping willows, pears, cherries, cascades of twinkling silver, are particularly lovely, as are colorful shrubs, those with garnet or golden limbs glowing through the ice that coats them. Individual needles, blades of grass, berries become encased with ice, and the twinkling stalactites of icicles drip from the frozen ridges of rocks and roofs. It’s a frail picture, as the sun, responsible for this magic, also breaks the spell; we listen for the tinkling of the ice chips falling from the trees to scatter thickly, the lawn becoming a glistening blanket.
The sun itself in its rising and its setting is most spectacular in the winter when the horizons flush with deep pastels, pink, lavender and mauve, plum, purple, rose, before blending into the blue of the sky as the sun climbs, or descends, the dome. Or blazing horizons of bright oranges and reds, streaking across the sky, coloring the clouds, seeping through the black silhouettes of trees, until the sun pierces through with its brilliant splash of gold, shimmering the whole, or sinks, its last sliver of light slipping from view, the flames extinguished as the blackness consumes them.
Between the leaching away of sunlight and complete darkness, there’s the fleeting blue light of certain winter evenings. It’s a rare and temporary coloring of the world; everything, for a few moments, becomes a gentle blue, the receptive surface of the snow reflecting the blueness the sky harbors until night falls, the color fading rapidly, disappearing as suddenly as it arrived. It’s one of my favorite aspects of New England’s winter, a well-kept secret, the evanescent magic of walking in the midst of dusk’s blue snow.
As the solstice nears, the light closes in on us, gray creeping into the darkness earlier in the morning, gray darkening for an early night. I’ve never met anyone who relished this aspect of the annual cycle. Yet the stars are sharper in winter, a map of sparkling pin pricks illustrating the constellations, and the moon is more luminous, glowing against the snow with the radiance of almost daylight. And there’s a sense of burrowing which comes with the lessening of the light, a feeling of early rest.
I realize I’ve used far too many superlatives, yet that’s what winter is – extremes. Extremes of darkness and of light, of storminess and of peace, of isolation and of togetherness, as we slowly inch toward the solstice, and swiftly toward winter’s crowning glory – Christmas. I love it all – the bustle, the lights, the music, the movies. I love Radio City Music Hall and the homespun performances on our own town stage. I love the blinking city lights and the twinkling candles in our neighborhood windows. I love the tree at Rockefeller Center, and the little one at Town Hall. I love the Christmas tree in all its phases — the selecting, the cutting, the stringing of lights, of popcorn and cranberries, the decorating. I love decking the halls, baking the cookies, sending the cards, wrapping the presents, reading the stories, singing the songs. I love caroling to our neighbors, and remembering them, year after year, when they’re no longer on our list of elders to visit. What cherished memories they left us with, Leila ringing her jingle bell, Jane on her porch, Phyllis in her kitchen, Peggy at her door, Eleni, singing along. And I love the Mass on Christmas Eve, at the Congregational Church, Howard Valley, Our Lady of Lourdes, the crèche, “Silent Night”. I love to reclaim all the magic.
We’re so blessed these last few years to have a small child in our home for Christmas. There’s no greater testament to the spirit of Christmas than a child’s sincere solemnity at the manger, and faithful belief in a jolly old elf who makes “glad the heart of childhood”, spending Christmas Eve spreading good will and validating their goodness. Christmas is, indeed, for children, and the child in all of us.
Dayna McDermott Arriola