I think it’s funny the way we talk about the days getting shorter. Like night isn’t really part of a day.
There are 24 hours in a day, but we rarely refer to the dark bit as part of those 24 hours. We have daylight (the real day it seems), and night. Not day-light and day-dark.
Of course, we don’t see particularly well after the sun disappears and so our tales of the dark (ancient and modern) are filled with monsters and demons and thieves and teenagers with baseball bats who come to haunt our dreams and destroy our actual mailboxes.
But it’s only since the electric light became a switch we could so casually flick that we have so fully turned away from the dark and done everything we could to cast light into all the corners of our waking hours (and sometimes night lights for our sleeping ones too).
And resisting the dark means that our principal mode in the darkest season is forbearance rather than contented coziness. Winter’s gloom becomes something to be feared or dismissed instead of embraced.
I think we’re at risk of losing something in our relationship to the world as we’ve pushed aside the dark as part of our daily experience and the dark season as part of our year. We moan and complain about the gloomy evenings right before we switch on lights and keep it all outside. Rarely do we invite the dark inside to join us for a cozy evening.
Reading or eating a bowl of warm soup by candlelight, talking and drinking a hot chocolate by the fireplace if you have one, extra sweaters and fluffy socks…..when else but winter do we get to relish evenings of chilly, but comforting gloom? We’re losing the sense of being cloaked in a dark, winter wrapping we could otherwise enjoy.
And magic. Magic doesn’t often show up in full daytime brightness. Magic needs a glow. Not a fluorescent bulb, but firelight or candlelight, or the very last moment of twilight, or a half-full moon. Winter has more magic than summer.
One of my simple pleasures around the darkest days is to sit in the coziest chair with the dimmest lamp my middle aged eyes can get away with, in front of a roaring fire, with a book1 and a glass of good, single malt scotch. I don’t buy the good stuff at any other time of the year, because….well, the light isn’t quite right.
Summer and daylight is a time for prosecco and salads, spritzers and warm, lush tomatoes, fresh herbs and sweet fruit.
Winter and dark is a time for whisky and stew, deep red wines and things covered with pastry, warm spices, root vegetables, and ‘mulling’. Winter is not the time for lettuce wraps.
We treat ‘eating seasonally’ like it’s something just recently invented on the Food Network instead of as the normal way our grandparents and great grandparents and all the human generations before them, ate food. We - the last two or three generations - are the odd ones out for ignoring the season’s delights in favor of foods that come from the other hemisphere in the other season.
The foods that ‘go with’ winter best are the ones that never saw the light of day to begin with: the carrots, mushrooms, potatoes, turnips. We store them in the dark too - in the root cellar - or in my case, in the bottom of the pantry cupboard, next to the jars that preserve the spoils of summer waiting to be popped open to make a winter-worthy ragout, or to add some beans to a stew. Those go with winter too - the jars and cans. Stored in the dark. We can sympathize with them as we pull them off the shelf.
Lots of people talk of this season as the one best suited for reflection. I think that’s true too, but only if we can turn down the artificial brightness a bit.
There is so much to do when it’s bright. But so much more to be when it’s dark. When people can’t quite see you clearly in your poorly-lit corner, you are freer to unfurl a little of your soul, even while your legs are quite tightly furled under you against the chill.
I love the new sprouts that respond to the brightness and the warmth of spring, and the long, hot summer evenings on the porch, and the light sweaters of fall along with its vibrant kick of color.
But I love winter too. I genuinely look forward to the ‘dark season’ and the way it fosters deeper friendships around the fire, the richness of food and festivities, the quiet moments that need no interrupting, early bedtimes, candles at the dinner table, and my single malt scotch and slippers.
I’m raising a glass to wish you too, a delicious and appropriately dark winter.
I am currently reading, for the first time if you can believe it, the Lord of the Rings, and it couldn’t be a more perfect fireside, winter read. It’s an old copy as well, and even the pages are faded and tinted dark.
“Winter is not the time for lettuce wraps.” ☺️
I fear I may be the inspiration for this post - me and my obsession with candles and the need to put small bits of light everywhere at this time of year. I do indeed see it as something to “get through” rather than to embrace. Thank you for this reminder of a better way...