When winter envelops you in its embrace, the only place you can look is within. Summer makes you look outwards. It entertains you with a spectacle of colours, intoxicates you with its heady, floral scents, dazzles you with its bright sunlight, distracts you, takes you out of yourself.
Winter is about turning inwards and making peace with yourself. It’s about contemplating, imagining and trusting. It’s about guarding – and, if need be, keeping secret – the flame that those who fear the infinity of its possibilities may try to extinguish.
Summer is for those who believe only what they see, while Winter favours those who see not just with their physical eyes but also with the eyes of their soul. For those who can speak with animals, trees and the winds. Those who love Winter are not afraid to let their inner flame grow and burn with endless possibilities. They do not allow their imagination to be fenced in but dare picture wonders others declare to be impossible. Those who love Winter are those who trust, those who can already see what cannot yet be seen: that the tree’s bare branches will bloom with bright green leaves again, that the desolate-looking soil will yield fruits and crops anew, those who sense the miracle of birth and rebirth in the darkness of the earth’s womb long before the first green shoot springs out onto the surface.
Those who truly love Winter are privy to Magic. They smile indulgently – the way one smiles at a yet ignorant child – at the paunchy, red-clad, doll-eyed image of Santa Claus, and, instead, wink at a very different Father Frost. It is a Sir Christémas with a knowing face and a cloak woven with the colours of the earth – green and russet and gold, sparkling with icicles and embroidered with silver and diamond frost patterns. An ageless figure with hazel eyes and the arcane knowledge of Merlin, who knows words that can alter elements, can cast spells and brew potions. A shapeshifter who appears to you in the amber eyes of the russet fox that glint in the street in the middle of the night. Or the mysterious green eyes of the tabby cat that looks up at your window as you close the curtains in the early evening, and says, if you can hear it, “It’s going to be a long, dark night, so guard the flame that glows within you well. Cherish it, nurture it for when the time comes for it to grow into a fire that will turn imagination into reality. A fire full of magic.”
Scribe Doll
Scribe Doll 
Beautiful, Katherine. I love your interpretation of winter and going within, and not being afraid to do that. Such excitement and acticipation of the new. Beautiful!. 😍
Thank, Monika :–)
Such lovely imagery! I love winter for it’s violet blue twilights and the remembrance of the bright moon lit snow that glistens. I also collect St. Nick- Father Christmas figures and have the green clad figure you describe so beautifully. To the magic of the winter season!
Thank you, Annette.
A time of watchfulness. Birds are aware how visible they are. Cats prowl. People light fires. But in my garden there are still corn marigolds out, brightening the gloom of a grey corner with an splash of gold.
It sounds delightful!
Guarding the secret self–that is a potent value. I don’t know how you feel, but I have recently given up what purported to be a secret in my self in order to gain mastery over other parts that for all I know may yield up greater secrets still. And I feel what you say about Winter is true–one can walk in a snowstorm and feel the heat of one’s body in the same moment that one becomes aware of the heat of one’s soul at the center of the whirling daily realities around one. I always enjoy the posts you write, but this one is, I feel, very special. You have a special and intimate contact with the Earth that I enjoy very much. Thanks for your post.
You pay me a great compliment, thank you! Yes, sometimes you do need to let go of a secret in order to discover what else is stored beneath it. I wish you a very happy, creative winter.
I love that Sir Christémas with his cloak woven with the colours of the earth – green and russet and gold, sparkling with icicles and embroidered with silver and diamond frost patterns.
And I wondered if you could be nurturing a writing project.
I wish I were nurturing a writing project! All I’m nurturing at the moment is writing (or rather, non-writing) guilt! I’m glad you like our Sir Christémas.
“Winter favours those who see not just with their physical eyes but also with the eyes of their soul.” I like that sentence. A truly nice post with nice ideas, and not only because I concur, but because of the way how they are expressed. 🙂
I’m very glad you like it. Thank you for your kind words.
Wow, this is beautiful, Katherine! A keeper of winter magic and Christmas that warms the soul. Thank you! xo
Thank you for your kind words, Catherine Glad you liked it.