This is an offering of help for Weather Complainers™ and a reminder homemakers can set the dark months’ ambiance. It has never become not strange to me when someone starts doing a little bit of Weather Complaining™. It’s the boring talk of the unintelligent and sinful. Some women nearly make disliking cold (during winter) and grieving that summer will end (during summer) their whole personality. First, stop complaining about the weather.
Second, be a great homemaker during the winter. If your children are tempted to complain (but I doubt they will be if you don’t model Weather Complaining™), mothers are a perfect person to lift the mood.
“Seasonality is good for the soul. Winter, a time of withdrawal and rest, is good for humanity. We fool ourselves by pretending we should live in eternal summer.”
Or, as Grace put it, “Wanting winter to be like summer or spring is like wanting your middle age or old age to be like your youth. Spend time embracing mortality with gratitude.”
The dark months are quiet. Welcome the lengthened evenings. I have written down some ideas of what to love about the wintertide.
- The peace of watchfulness
- Snow reflects bright and cheery daylight inside the house
- Down-home pleasures like closing the curtains at nightfall
- Experimenting cooking ambitious and exquisite entrees
- Creating clean and comfortable places for resting
- Good blankets
- Meaningful work to do, quiet but not idle
- The calm
- The practice of death and resurrection
- Learning to like times of trial
- A long reading list
- Reading aloud through a book
- The ease of shelter
- Warm-toned lightbulbs in table lamps and as many candles as you can afford
- Snowy walking
- Comradery
- Folding warm laundry
- Knitting a scarf for each of your children
- Reading poems
- Keeping a light against darkness
- Making soups
- Music playing, my daughters and I love listening to our favorite songs by The Andrews Sisters in the wintertime while we deep clean a room
- Wearing the love of my family like a crown
- Homestyle baked treats
- The keeper of the home is friendly and available to talk
“It was so wonderful to be there, safe at home, shelter from the winds and the cold. Laura thought that this must be a little like heaven, where the weary are at rest.”
Laura Wilder, The Long Winter
