How to fall in love with winter

0:00This is The Guardian.

0:08Today, how to ditch the punishing resolutions and fall in love with winter.

0:24So here we are in January, and all across Europe, winter has most definitely arrived. If the plummeting temperatures and icy winds, along with, you know, all the other stuff that's been going on, have left you in the grip of the January blues, then you are not alone. The cold and grey months fill many of us with dread. But for writer Catherine May, it's her favourite season. If I'm going for a longer walk, I go to the woods. I like getting there really early in the morning when the sun's just rising and it's low through the trees. The air's always thick and slightly misty and you get those amazing sunbeams coursing through the trees.

1:09January and February, they're the times when you get those beautiful frosts. And I love the way everything's turned white. It's so beautiful. And I love the feeling of that really cold air in my lungs.

1:28Even away from the winter walks, she thinks we're making a huge mistake wishing away the season and should ditch all the punitive New Year's resolutions we've just made. So how can we learn to love and not loathe the dark months ahead? From The Guardian, I'm Annie Kelly. Today I'm Focus. The party's over and January is upon us. But how can we make friends with the worst months of the year?

1:59So Catherine May, it's so brilliant to have you on today in Focus. Thank you for having me. I and many others are a huge fan of your book, Wintering, which has come on to be an international bestseller and a touchstone for many, helping them get through the long, dark months. It's really nice to be here and it's always a pleasure to talk about winter. Could you start by telling us what wintering is? What does it mean to you? So wintering's got two meanings for me. One's the very practical survival of the winter season, which we are always really interested to see plants and animals do, but we're less interested in our own survival and understanding it.

2:43And more metaphorically, I use it to talk about the way we survive the dark seasons in life, which could very well happen in the summer, but are often exacerbated in those darker, colder months. What was your journey towards understanding what wintering meant to you? I wrote it after my previous book, which was The Electricity of Every Living Thing, which was a book about my autism identification when I was 40. And it led me to really think about the pattern across my whole life of these really desolate periods that I couldn't make sense of until I got my diagnosis. I just got this very sudden idea that I wanted to talk about about this pattern but the idea of winter just came to me in a rush really and the word wintering which I really knew from Sylvia Plath's poem which I'd studied at A-level.

3:36And which poem is that? It's called Wintering, yeah. It's one of her last actually and I think it was one of the last half a dozen poems she wrote but it's actually very beautiful and still and that poem ends with a note of optimism which I really feel kind of captures winter. You know, there is a way out always. So a way out, not just of winter when it's all cold outside, but what you call these personal winters, these times in your life where you're going through things that you're finding really difficult. Yeah, I think I really came to trust those periods of stillness that come in a personal winter.

4:15It's a period of necessary stillness. It doesn't fit with how we want life to be and how we're told it ought to be, but it does actually work its magic on us if we let it. And we can find pockets within it that are deeply comforting and just full of delicious solitude, which sometimes is what we need. And I guess the challenge is you miss out, don't you, on a whole season by resisting it and bracing yourself against it. We try and wish away winter and that means wishing away a whole quarter of our lives across our whole existence. And we're missing out on something that is full of a different beauty to summer beauty, something that our bodies know how to do in order to restore themselves and something that our minds need in order to reflect and to kind of till over what's happened in the previous year and to start thinking towards the next year.

5:17It's such an important point in the year. It's such, I call it the crucible of the year.

5:31I think that that idea of understanding the need for solitude, understanding the need for rest, must seem very counterintuitive to a lot of people who really resist that, you know, darkness. of winter and the idea of life kind of closing in. Your book obviously takes us on that kind of arc from October to March following the equinoxes through the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year, December the 21st, and then out again the other side. But a lot of it is to do with this idea of being okay with it being dark. For you, does the darkness offer any kind of hidden gifts that we can start to really appreciate during this time of the year?

6:14Yeah, definitely. I mean, I think it's important to remember that those of us who live in Northern Europe have always lived with winter and a very distinct season of winter. And the long dark nights are difficult. We do lack sunlight and the structure of our lives mean that we are often locked away in a classroom or an office, you know, for the whole time that the sun's up. I think it's really important to try and encounter what little daylight there is, even if it's very weak and it's very grey. I think that really helps. But those long dark nights have culturally been so important to us across history.

6:51They have been periods of storytelling, of gathering, of reflection, of intimacy. We know that our sleep changes during those long dark nights. We're not supposed to sleep in the same way in winter and summer. But the winter long sleeps are really restorative and really important. This is a time of dreaming. And it's also a time of resting ready for the next phase. Can you explain a bit more about how we're supposed to sleep in winter compared to the warmer months, the lighter months? There's some really interesting evidence on it, actually. And what we know and what we know from the historical record as well, scant as it is, that people in the long winter nights fall into a pattern of two sleeps rather than one called a first and second sleep with a period in the middle, which we think historically might have been called the watch.

7:43It was a time that people valued for gentle conversation, sex. I mean, life still continues in winter. That's why we have lots of September babies. Also, meditation, contemplation, all of the kind of quiet, gentle, private activities that the busy summer world often gets in the way of us doing. We panic when we wake up in the middle of the winter night and think we've got chronic insomnia. we're actually refinding a very natural sleep pattern that we've done for centuries and centuries and centuries and centuries and it's worth getting that slightly earlier night it's worth letting ourselves wake in the night if we want to and just quietly reading a book or thinking for a while and seeing what it brings us and you also write a lot about being inside embracing the warmth and comfort of your home in a way that is nourishing rather than being stifling.

8:45Can you tell us a bit about that other side of winter that we need to embrace? Yeah. I think we can take our cues from Scandinavians when we think about our home in winter because actually it doesn't have to be dreary. We need to think carefully about lighting it. That's why candlelight is so brilliant at this time of year but also lamplight and we can enjoy that kind of cosy atmosphere that it creates. Just taking loads of care to make life feel good rather than feel desolate and abandoned and just looking after ourselves through that, I think.

9:33it's strange isn't it because the idea of looking after ourselves is an interesting one because I think in January the start of the year we're coming at the darkest point of the year but looking after ourselves suddenly means like engaging in all these quite punitive New Year's resolutions, right? So this idea of dieting, having to go to the gym, giving up alcohol, like finding ways to be better and in lots of different ways. It just feels very counterintuitive to what you're saying about the natural rhythms of the year. Yeah, well, when you think about it, we used to fast before the feast. So Advent was a period of fasting.

10:14And so when the feast came, we felt like we'd earned it. And then we went into January just going about our business and not feeling bad about it. Over my lifetime, I think we have learned to feel incredibly guilty about celebrating at Christmas, which incidentally is not a moral failing. And then we kind of punish ourselves for the next month. About 10 years ago, I made a decision to never again make a New Year's resolution out of self-loathing. and that has been such a good check on all of the stuff that I used to do in January to punish myself instead I just try and think about what I can continue doing well from the previous year important question and what I'd love to add into my life in the new year that looks after me and that makes me happy nobody has done anything wrong over Christmas unless you've murdered your relatives in which case yeah okay you've got a bit of atonement to do but actually taking part in a Christmas feast with people you love is a is a really wonderful thing to do and in January you can just go back to your your life and you're okay this is not the best time to reform yourself no most new year's resolutions end anyway and it's actually a really great time to think about balance genuine balance and to really think about who you are as a human rather than who you ought to be according to a glossy magazine or a tiktok reel like the idea that you have to be in like the darkest coldest most kind of high and 80 months of the year you have to be you know operating at 350 % and then when all of that finishes you've then got to get yourself to the gym and go on a punitive diet.

12:06It's crazy, isn't it? It's absolute insanity and let's face it, it is pitched at women more than men as well. You know, this idea that we must be thin as well is a very important value to take into the new year. Look, I've had a year of caring this year. My husband's had cancer and I've been looking after him extensively for most of the year and what that's really left me, like after years of receiving letters from people who are in personal winters, like having gone back through one this year, what that's really left me with is how important it is to claw back what little you can, even at the most difficult times.

12:53A lot of what your book is about is about this idea of radical rest, which is one of my favourite bits about your book is this idea that actually, you know, we've been sold apart. And actually, in these winter months, what is really, really important to do is just rest and stop and gather our strength for the year ahead. And I wonder if you could tell me about that idea about rest as a radical act. Yeah, I mean, rest is something that we do nowadays in defiance of an entire world order. I mean, it's almost a cliche to say in defiance of capitalism, but definitely there is a huge factor of that that wants us to be ceaselessly productive.

13:36But it's not just coming from the outside. We believe that we are our best selves if we are being as productive as possible all the time. And we do not accept the need to rest. And then we wonder why we're so burnt out. And we're burnt out because it never stops. And, you know, over the last few decades, the level to which we are working has become truly unsustainable. We don't stop checking our emails when we get home in the evening. We don't stop checking our emails on holiday. We don't stop at the weekends. I used to watch my dad do this in the 90s. And, you know, he'd be calling into the office in the evening and think it was like pathological.

14:19And now everybody's at it. when we rest we defy centuries of exploitation and we support other people to rest too we have to be the ones to break the mold we can't wait for somebody to offer us a rest because they never ever will but it can be a hard balance for people can't it this kind of instinct to hibernate pull the blankets up maybe like block out the world um and you know you can create the grounds for feeling depressed or feeling isolated, shutting yourself off in that sense. How do you think we can find the right balance of retreating and resting, but also staying well and staying connected?

15:05It is really important, actually, to make sure that you maintain those connections, even if you don't want to be as social during personal winters or meteorological winters. But I do actually think that this is a symptom of waiting to the extremes until we rest. You know, like by the time we take a break, all we can do is slump on the sofa with a blanket over us, you know, watching Netflix. If we rest sooner, we notice that rest is just more active. You know, rest then is going for a walk or spending some time with some friends. Like it's a different kind of rest because we've still got capacity to do something at all, which we actually break completely when we break that bond with our bodies.

15:52And I also, you know, deeply, deeply understand that people's work and their obligations, like often caring obligations, push them way past their point of being able to make decisions about rest, you know, and that kind of unceasing nature of giving care, for example. can mean that rest is often a very distant dream. But I think it's so important to open up the conversation that lets us say, I need a break.

16:27Coming up, why you should keep your Christmas lights up until February. Some practical tips for getting through winter.

16:43What are some kind of practical, even small ways that we can adopt wintering into our lives? There are really simple things you can do. We know that if you encounter daylight every day, it helps your circadian rhythms to reset themselves and to understand where you are in the year. I would advise as much as possible seeing sunrise and sunset, like see those boundaries of the day. it takes a minute you can step outside at dawn and dusk you can step outside at lunchtime I take like a moment every morning when I've got up to just stand in the garden outside my back door and breathe the air just for a minute it doesn't take long but you have to really value it and when you do that you feel all those changes come through it's just a tiny reflective pause think about your light levels think about what you're eating and drinking and and think about how that might nourish you think about your sleep just pay attention to what you need and I would also add think about the spiritual nature of what you need as well like do you need some time to meditate?

18:04Do you need to be in a congregation or a group of people? Do you need to read something that's slow and, I don't know, fortifying? Take a few moments every day to give yourself those things. And if you skip a day because you're busy, that's fine because you go back to it the next day. It's that gentle. and that's I guess are these little personal rituals that you can do to get through the long dark months ahead yeah you talk a lot about rituals in your book are there any more that you've adopted that you'd like to pass on to people yeah there's a lot we can do it used to be tradition in medieval times not to take down Christmas decorations until Candlemas which is the 2nd of February I would suggest getting rid of the more annoying decorations because I don't think I'm the only one that finds Christmas decorations incredibly irritating and space consuming after a while.

19:01But I do keep the lights up and I keep the outside lights up. And that way I'm lighting up the street as well for all my neighbours. And I get the joy of that lovely glow in the house. Keep lighting those winter months and keep taking pleasure in them. That's a lovely idea. I think I might try and do that. But, you know, climate change is happening. it's happening all around us it's changing our experience of winter it's everything's getting milder if we don't get the snowfalls that we might have done a few decades ago how do you think that's going to affect our relationship with winter and and our moods if we're trying to connect more to to those seasons yeah I mean I think there's genuine grief there I know it's not the grief that other communities are feeling when there's you know huge loss that's happening but there is a grief at the loss of like seasonal identifiers and understanding the rhythm of the year working and there's some loss of some pauses as well you know the way that a snowfall used to give us like a little bit of a break um is all going and we're losing some of the things we found really beautiful and enchanting and exciting however winter is a cultural idea and we can carry on celebrating and marking all of the same ideas and all of the same places that we used to.

20:25And I think what it also means is that when we do have those much rarer frosty days and a little bit of snowfall, I wonder if there's something about their scarcity now that will let us really value it and see it for the magic it offers and for that wonderful sense of transformation just just for the short time. It's okay to feel that kind of childlike enchantment when those moments come. So cherish those moments where we get them. Yes. You write in wintering, in our winter a transformation happened. We read and we worked and we problem solved and we found new solutions. We changed our focus from pushing through with normal life and towards making a new one.

21:11when everything is broken everything is also up for grabs that's the gift of winter it's irresistible change will happen whether we like it or not we can come out of it wearing a different coat and I wondered if we could just end on the idea of of winter also about making space for for change positive change to happen in our lives as well yeah absolutely I think when we go into a personal winter we go in in full resistance and trying to figure out how we can make life feel like it felt before and how things can feel normal to us again. And our winters last for as long as we carry on thinking that way.

21:48And they begin to shift when we start accepting what's come in. That's not always good news. You know, that's not always a change for the better. But either way, our work is to find our way into the new world we're being offered and to accept it and live in it. And I think that's where the winter metaphor works so well, because that quiet midwinter period is something we all recognise as this time where we feel itchy and uncomfortable and weird and like, what's happening and why is nothing going on and when's life going to start again? But then when we emerge into January, as we all just have, we have often this sense of something new within us, something that we want to change or something that has changed or a new energy or a new idea or just a sense that the world feels full of possibility again.

22:46And that is the work of winter. That's the really good stuff that happens when we let it. Thank you so much. It's been so great talking to you. I genuinely feel excited now about the months ahead. So this is a great conversation to start the year with. Thank you so much, Catherine. There's still good things to come. Thank you.

23:10That was Catherine May, author of Wintering.

23:16Today's episode was presented by me, Annie Kelly, and produced by Ruth Abrahams. Sound design was by Joel Cox, and the executive producer was Sammy Kent. don't miss today and focus the latest out later this afternoon and we'll be back tomorrow

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