In Defense of Winter

By Ife J. Ibitayo

I hate winter. January and February are some of the hardest months of the year for me. The holidays have passed, and summer is too far away as the icy winter chill freezes my body into a corpsicle.

I never understood the profound mental impact of seasons until I moved north. I’ve always lived in warm places—California, Florida, Texas—so winter was always just a welcome reprieve from the sun’s incessant heat. Summer never really ended. It just retreated for a few months to regather its strength.

But here in Virginia, winter signals death. All animal life dies or burrows deep. And trees deform into ugly scarecrows, pointing leafless stubs into the heavens as if to accuse God, “You did this to me!”

A couple years ago, when I first experienced winter here in Virginia, I found myself asking God, “Why did you create this horrendous season? Why can’t we just skip from fall to spring?” Since then, He has ministered to me a couple valuable truths about winter.

Winter Prepares Our Bodies

One of the first articles I read about the benefit of winter said, “Many plants need shorter days and lower temperatures to become dormant. This way, plants can store up energy for new growth. If a fruit tree doesn’t have enough chilling time, it will produce fewer, weaker buds.”

Similarly, in the intervening months between the holiday season and spring, we just can’t do as much outside, and we interact less with others. This extra time is not wasted, but much like the fruit tree, gives us time to grow deep roots and prepare for the spring of rapid growth. If you’re like me, a born workaholic, work is the given, and rest is a rarity. I often don’t slow down until I’m forced to by exhaustion, sickness, external circumstances, or all of the above. Winter is one of those circumstances. It forces me to slow down now so that I can speed up when the appointed time arrives later.

Winter Prepares Our Eyes

Secondly, you can’t truly appreciate spring without winter. An Indian friend of mine once joked that India has three seasons: hot, hotter, and hottest. And this statement resonated deeply in my sunbaked Texan bones.

But here in Virginia, everything dies in winter: insects, trees, joggers (at least that’s what I assume happens to them). Beauty vanishes for months, replaced by monotonous sheets of grey and white. But when spring arrives, my attention is always arrested by the riot of revived life. Songbirds wake me up in the morning as they sing from newly formed nests on sprouting redbuds. The sun sinks just a little later, allowing me to be awed by dazzling purple and red sunsets. Only the cold dark of winter prepared my eyes to appreciate the bright daybreak of spring.

Conclusion

I am convinced that winter will always be my least favorite season. But its also had the most profound impact on my life. The cold months of suffering I’ve braved, both literally and existentially, have dramatically shaped the man I now am. Any seed of resilience, courage, patience, and longsuffering that’s flowered in my life today was planted in the cold, hard soil of winter. So even if I never come to cherish that season, I will always defend it.

“There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens.”

(Ecclesiastes 3:1)