Last Updated on 31 March, 2026 by Cara Sutra
We have a cultural resistance to winter, and I get it. Daylight hours are shorter and the weather is challenging, with snow and ice causing travel issues as well as making it more difficult to keep warm. Social media tries to cheer us up with wistful winter themes; candlelit rooms adorned with fairy lights, knitted jumpers, mugs of hot chocolate topped with marshmallows and other curated, staged cosiness. This never fully resonated with me, despite winter being my favourite season. The reasons why I love winter run a lot deeper than snowflake aesthetics. The way the world slows down, the noise softens and expectations are lessened means my nervous system finally has a chance to rest.
Winter is pretty, sure – but that isn’t why I love it. I love winter because the rules change. There is permission to stop and rest. Less pressure to be out and about, active and visible, and lowered expectations around performance and productivity. This isn’t the season for movement and growth. It’s the time of year when I focus on keeping warm, on meaningful introspection, and on connection with the people who matter most. My body and mind take a deep breath before the return of spring. In winter, I can withdraw from the world. I can rest. Others may mourn the loss of light, but for me, it’s a relief. I love the dark skies, like nature’s duvet over the world. I love the frosty weather, nature’s decorative sparkle. And I love the slower heartbeat of the world in wintertime, a calmer rhythm I can live inside.
In recent months, I have felt a strong pull to live more in accordance with the seasons. To be guided by nature and live in harmony with it, instead of attempting unnatural year-round sameness. Creatures in hibernation tell us rest is required and appropriate, evergreens reassure us of ongoing life throughout the stillness. If spring is when the natural world wakes, winter is when it sleeps. And I am part of the natural world.
I am tucked away. I am sheltering. I am charging in readiness for the year ahead. There is unrushed, yet to be tapped, potential. Newness is just around the corner, but for now, nothing. I light the next beacon in a long line of prior new beginnings, which accumulate through the years as echoes, layering to form the reality of who I am right now.
Many of us try to fight against nature at this time of year; we are already exhausted after December festivities, yet we push ourselves out there into a cold, dark world, to hit the ground running – when it is likely still hard and frozen over. I think that’s why many of us slip up in January or are at least exhausted by the time the year and nature begin to truly come to life.
How much more in flow would we be if we granted ourselves the grace of pausing, retreating and resting in January? If we turned our awareness to true self-care and laying the inner groundwork for the year ahead through self-reflection, self-awareness and giving ourselves what we need to be able to grow into the best we can be.
– Kirsty Gallagher, Sacred Seasons
What People Think Loving Winter Means
When I say that winter is my favourite season, you might assume it’s because of the looks, the weather, the midwinter feasting. The love of the winter season is often associated with imagery like frosty walks, woolly jumpers, socks or mittens, and crackling log fires.
Cosy-core is attractive, but it’s curated superficiality. Carefully styled moments to be edited, put through a filter and shared on social media. This version of winter is purely aesthetic, to be displayed, consumed then moved on from.
I don’t love winter just because it’s pretty and photographs well. It isn’t just palatable through performance. I’ve never felt particularly comforted by the idea that if I arrange my surroundings to reflect trending-on-Instagram winter home décor, I’ll somehow feel more aligned with this cold, dark and slower time of year.
Why Snowflake Aesthetics Don’t Work for Me
Much of the winter aesthetic you find online assumes a healthy baseline. Winter vibes in media tend to encourage carrying on just as you would the rest of the year, with flickers of soothing moments from scented candles and a taste of warmth from a mug of hot chocolate. There’s a strong assumption that slowing down in winter is a choice, not that protecting my energy is an ongoing necessity.
My winters aren’t about making my surroundings prettier so I can tolerate them. It’s about feeling aligned with the slower pace. Finding peace in the darkness. Surviving the big freeze. Stripping everything back to raw honesty and listening to what my mind and body actually need, instead of battling them into seasonal compliance.
I don’t approach winter as something I need to adapt, fix or soften. Winter is a fully immersive seasonal experience that suits the way I already exist in this world.
What Winter Actually Gives Me
Reduced Sensory Overload
The world feels a lot quieter in winter, with usual hectic happenings muffled by snow and ice, colours that dazzle in sunshine muted behind cloud, mist or early night. After the celebratory holiday season, social noise fades to calm stillness. The cold weather necessitates higher alertness and vigilance whilst setting a slower pace. There’s less constant stimulation and demand, with fewer daylight hours leading to a shorter active day, and more time to rest.
My nervous system has been shaped by years of trauma, learned hypervigilance and the recent addition of chronic illness, so the reduction in sensory overload as winter rolls around each year is indescribably welcome. Instead of bombarding me, winter lowers the volume. My senses can settle and rest without the usual hustle and distraction, leading to them feeling much more manageable.
There’s no such thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothing.
– Billy Connolly
Fewer Social Expectations
As mentioned, there’s a sense of calm after December celebrations and New Year parties. When January arrives, there’s a collective easing of social pressure. I am not invited out, and there are no assumptions that I should be out and about at all, whether for meet-ups, to be productive, to perform wellness or to be visible in any other way. Staying in, saying no and opting out is socially acceptable in January. I can hibernate, like the natural creature I am.
And what a massive relief that is.
Winter places no demands on me to be available, active or endlessly responsive. I can enjoy my needed rest without guilt, and my solitude without explanation.
A Time for Emotional Honesty
When you think of summer days, images are conjured from media and cultural assumptions that everyone is cheerful, energetic, active, successful in whatever form that may take, and there can be no reason to feel sad during the long hours of daylight. There’s no such assumption in winter. People don’t insist upon or imply that you should be cheerful, especially in Britain where we have a strong communal connection to the weather.
Instead, there’s a group acceptance and permission to feel all of your emotional truth, no matter how stark or bleak. This makes way for necessary psychological honesty, feeling our depths of sadness, grief, tiredness and unflinching introspection without guilt or pretence.
I enjoy winter as a natural pause, a time for clarity and introspective focus. This transitional period is a great annual opportunity to properly consider what I’d like to work on, what my plans are and how I’ll move forwards into literal and metaphorical spring.
Winter lets my feelings exist exactly as they are, and that authenticity is perfectly aligned with my core values.
Darkness As Safety, Not Threat
Something that regularly grates with me is that darkness is framed as something to avoid, something fearful and worrying. That darkness is where evil resides, and dark is something to be fought against and vanquished with the contrasting virtues of light. There’s a whole deeper psychological debate about the moral values assigned to dark and light which come from the world’s oldest stories, and how that relates to prejudices in society, but that’s a huge and separate conversation for another day. It’s also a conversation that I fully accept I’m not the best authority to tackle.
For me, darkness has always felt safe.
I don’t run from the dark, I hide in it. It covers like a blanket, it’s quiet and non-judgemental. I’m not vulnerable or exposed in the dark. I don’t feel watched in the same way. There’s no pressure to perform, or to explain myself. I’m held, cossetted, comforted. The scary aspects of the world walk in the light.
A Soothing Pause
My winters are a container for things that can simply exist without requiring solution right now. I’m strongly attracted to liminal spaces and transitional times, so winter holds obvious appeal for me. It’s an in-between moment, where the previous year has concluded and we are reflecting, whilst the new year has only just begun, and not properly at that, and plans are still forming, buds are still safely deep underground.
Grief is held and honoured without being rushed. Exhaustion is acknowledged without judgement. Personal perspectives are considered without conclusions being reached just yet. Feelings are analysed and given space to breathe, which often feels impossible in brighter, louder, busier seasons.
Winter says to me: Stop. Wait. You don’t need to bloom right now. You don’t have to improve or reach perfection. All you need to do is sit with your feelings, be patient, and survive.
The Relief of Zero Productivity
Modern life is hectic, heavy, and knackering. Are you tired? I know I am. There are so many avenues of life which constantly bleat at us to do, to grow, to create, to be productive or else your value as a cog in the system is reduced to nil.
Winter is the final remaining resistance to that narrative.
There is unashamed dormancy and legitimate withdrawal from the world. Even the food of winter echoes that slower pace, with traditional fayre centring roasted root vegetables and slow cooked meats.
Sunrise is later, encouraging me to stay and rest where possible, instead of rising to early light and become busy and productive for longer despite reduced capacity and energy levels. The sun sets earlier, bringing the cosy comfort of darkness which helps switch my mind off for the day, easing the transition to night-time rest and rejuvenation.
Winter says that rest isn’t failure, quiet isn’t brokenness. I love winter because I’m allowed to be exactly who I am right now, where I am right now, without the otherwise constant pressure to be someone better, somewhere else.
In winter, I am exactly who I am right now without apology.
Healing is often framed as something which should look productive, and I realise that I may seem hypocritical pushing against that narrative whilst writing about my own healing processes here on my blog. Writing is my way of processing my feelings and analysing the deepest parts of myself. Sharing my honest truths in this way aligns with my core values of authenticity, as I embrace being a multi-faceted mess rather than a one-dimensional polished pretence.
I anchor myself and dream into my depths.
I remember who I am and call all parts of me home.
From this place I tend to my boundaries and nourish my body and soul.
– Louise Press, from The Almanac, A Seasonal Guide to 2026
A Season That Doesn’t Demand Performance
Winter doesn’t ask me to be an inspiration. It’s a season that doesn’t want me to package up everything that I am, that I’ve been through and that I hope for the future into something positive and uplifting. Pain doesn’t have to mean gain, and slowness is encouraged without necessarily leading to improvement.
Why do I love winter? It lets me be me. It says that who I am right now, in this present moment, is absolutely fine and all that matters. What came before has gone. What will come is yet to be. But right now, in the depths of winter. I get to be exactly who I am without pressure, pretence or performance. And that’s why, year after year, I welcome the return of winter.
If you’re entering this new year feeling tired, heavy, or resistant to the noise of productivity and expectation, you’re not alone. Winter is here, but it isn’t asking anything of you. You don’t have to fix yourself or push forward. You’re allowed to rest here, in the dark, at your own pace.
Here comes the longest night; black sky, moon white
and waxing swells the shallow tides below
as ink-dipped spiders string pearls by starlight –
We sink into the earth, silent and slow,
peppered with seeds from burning solstice days
who wake early, while the old kingdom sleeps,
to stir their bodies in the winter clay
and rise, renewed, above the dark and deep.
Only one their secret knows – blackbird flings
his velvet voice aloft; of tender moss
and violets and dappled beech he sings,
a paradise, asleep beneath the frost.
Know this, when hope wanes and the light is gone –
The darkest hour is just before the dawn.
– Tiffany Francis-Baker, Ebb and Flow
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