Nothing can be as peaceful and endless as a long winter darkness, going on and on, like living in a tunnel where the dark sometimes deepens into night and sometimes eases to twilight, you’re screened from everything, protected, even more alone than usual.
The True Deceiver, Tove Jansson (translated by Thomas Teal)
I love winter. I love bowls of slightly salty porridge with a spoonful of treacle first thing in the morning, before the sun is properly in the sky. I love the darkness, and the cold. I love roaring fires, and coats and boots. I love sitting too close to the radiator, a book balanced on my knees. I love roasts, and deep dishes of creamy potatoes, and generous slices of cake beside pots of coffee. I love warming my hands around a steaming mug of tea. I love inviting groups of friends around and spending a day in front of good films, bringing dishes out of the oven with reassuring regularity.
I look forward to this season every year; the long, quiet weeks following Christmas when everyone is reluctant to leave their homes, when I can decompress and start the year afresh. I spend much of winter in happy hibernation, embracing my more natural introverted state after a December spent being social. The solitude and quiet allows me time and space to luxuriate in literature; winter is the season during which I read most prolifically. I take frequently to my bath, filling it with bubbles and spending hours topping up the hot water, devouring books in their entirety. I snuggle up with woollen blankets in my armchair, spending time with books I might not commit to at other points in the year. Januarys past have seen me dive straight into Anna Karenina, Moby Dick, and A Suitable Boy: weighty tomes that defy the daily commute, and are best read on the sofa. I immerse myself in worlds white with winter: in Narnia, Scandinavia, rural Russia, and the coldest English days, when the crisp, fresh snow underfoot seems to make its way off the page and into my living room.
At this time of year, everything happens slowly – the oven takes longer to warm up, bread takes an age to rise, and mornings seem to arrive at a snail’s pace. It is antithetical to the way I live during the rest of the year, when I bustle from task to task and place to place with a ‘To Do’ list as long as my arm. This side of Christmas, it’s impossible to bustle. Even the kettle takes more time to boil.
In the deep midwinter, it often seems as if the cold will continue in perpetuity. I may love winter but, after the barren months, when much of our fresh food is pulled from beneath the ground, I begin to happily anticipate the early green shoots that herald the arrival of spring.