The clearing season

I used to dislike winter.

I’m not into skiing or skating. My preferred recreation is a walk or a hike. But it’s not as enjoyable when the wind stings your face and the cold numbs your fingers. Besides, the outdoors is less scenic when the trees are leafless and gray and brown are the only colors to be seen. I also can’t work in my garden, which is cut down to dead brown stubble to await spring.

There’s a saying in the Nordic countries that there’s no such thing as bad weather, only bad clothes. I try to bear that in mind. Still, going for a walk in the winter feels less pleasant than in the other seasons. It’s certainly more hazardous, demanding more preparation.

However, I recently had a shift in my thinking that helps me appreciate the winter. Instead of mourning the absence of greenery, you have to learn how to look below the surface. You have to appreciate what endures.

Seasonal rhythms

Despite appearances, the world isn’t bleak or dead in winter. The green leaves, the blossoms, the dappled sunlight, the flowing of water, the buzz of insects—those are all gone. But life continues. It’s subtler, slower, demanding more patience and attention to spot, but it hasn’t disappeared.

The trees are bare and cold, but their roots are alive beneath the earth. Animals sleep the winter away in dens, nests and burrows. Hardy seeds endure the cold. In fact, they need freeze-thaw cycles to weaken their tough coat, so that the embryo can sprout in the spring. Insects leave eggs buried in the ground, or in the shelter of dead leaves and the hollow stems of native plants. Fish survive beneath the ice coating ponds and lakes.

Most of all, there are the evergreens. They’re dull dark green in the summer, but in the frozen landscape, they stand out like vivid splashes of life. The dense needles of the trees and prickly leaves of holly bushes are a sign that life persists even in harsh climates.

We humans like to think we’re above nature. We live in heated homes, safe behind windows that keep out the howl of wind and storm. With artificial light and alarm clocks, we can ignore the shortening days and the early nights.

But human beings are still part of nature, however much we might deny it. We can try to hold ourselves apart, but at some deep level, we feel those seasonal rhythms too. They call on us to slow down, to step back from the world, to rest.

Untangling the holidays

For many of us, the holidays are stressful, busy and complex. We have to juggle the extra obligations of the season—decorating, cooking, buying presents, hosting parties, traveling—with all the other things we have to do no matter the time of the year. Everything is more crowded, everywhere more traffic-choked. There’s pressure to make everything perfect, because the holidays only come around once per year. A broken plan or a holiday disaster is far more disappointing and crushing than it would be at any other time of year.

Meanwhile, capitalism turns life into an always-open, 24-7 assembly line. There’s constant pressure to produce and pressure to consume. If anything, the holidays are more frenetic than the rest of the year. Retailers flood us with gift catalogs and gaudy ads. Charities bombard us with end-of-year pledge drives. Social media fills our feeds with picture-perfect houses and parties. All the urgings of capitalism—to buy, to spend, to compete, to climb another rung up the ladder of perfection—are amped up during the holiday season.

I wouldn’t want to be a subsistence farmer. But one thing agrarian societies had going for them was that, once the harvest was over and winter had arrived, there wasn’t so much work to do. They could rest until it was time to plant again.

Capitalism alienates us from this natural rhythm. For all the advantages we have that our ancestors didn’t, we inhabit a maniacally fast-paced world compared to them. Sometimes, it seems like we scarcely have time to catch our breath.

There’s no reason it has to be this way. Our traditions, and our economies, exist for the sake of humans, not vice versa. If they’re making our lives more difficult, we can decide to change them.

All this stress is bad for our minds and our bodies. Happily, it’s also optional. The holidays don’t have to be so overwhelming. But because culture has its own inertia, it can be difficult to shrug off expectations and swim against the current.

We can take inspiration from nature. For most living beings in the temperate bands, summer is the busy season: the time to grow, to build up food reserves, to reproduce. Winter is the time of rest. It’s the time to shed leaves, to crank down their metabolism, to find a burrow and hibernate.

Why don’t we do the same?

Taking lessons from nature

The biggest and most obvious way to lessen holiday stress is minimalism. You can agree not to exchange gifts with your friends and family, or at the very least, buy presents only for kids. If you absolutely have to get gifts, put a cap on the amount of money anyone is expected to spend. You can purge stuff instead of acquiring.

However, my suggestion this year goes beyond holiday minimalism. It’s to take the winter as an opportunity to lighten your life, to pare it down and get rid of everything that’s not essential. Clear away anything that burdens you, like sweeping fallen needles off the floor.

Give yourself permission to slow the pace of your life, to deliberately accomplish less. Go to bed earlier and sleep later, following the sinking arc of the sun. If you have a chore that can be put off until next year, let it bide.

Instead of artificial busyness, let yourself fall into the rhythms of the season. If you have vacation time to take, take it. (Almost half of Americans don’t.) If you can work from home, do that. Say no to the hustle.

Instead of rushing from one scene to another, stay home and cultivate peace in your life. Unplug from the endless flow of distraction: turn off the news, log out of social media, and read a book or watch a movie you’ve seen before. You can turn down any invitations you don’t want to go to with a clean conscience. (If anyone complains, tell them I gave you permission.) Instead of a big party, consider a small and intimate gathering.

I can imagine if the end of the year became an extended national holiday, when all nonessential activities ceased. Shops and offices would close, so people could be home with their families. The haze of traffic would dissipate from roads and bridges. The world would fall quiet and peaceful. We might be able to hear ourselves think again.

Just as winter turns to spring, a time will come again when more is demanded of us: to hustle, to work, to get things done. When that time comes, we can answer the call. But for now, try taking this season as a place of respite. Hold it as an interstitial space between the end of the old year and the beginning of the new. It might do more good than you realize.