Figured it might be nice to have a post where everyone can share what they love about winter! What's your favourite tradition/ritual/scenic-spot/seasonal-food/etc?

Personally my favourite part about the colder weather is being able to wear layers and layers of clothes, hats, and especially different kinds of scarves and balaclavas that would probably seem a little out of place during any other season. I've always loved the feeling of being nice and toasty in the midst of a chilly environment, to me it's much more pleasing than the summer ideal of cooling off during a heat wave.

A treasured winter hobby of mine is going out for a walk when it's dark out and the streetlights have come on, turning the snow a nice soft amber colour, and listening to some atmospheric music, as the scents and sights weave stories in my mind.

I love bundling too, but I also love chopping firewood. We have a wood stove, and before the week is up, we'll get that up and running. Its weird, but I don't like using heaters apart from fire. My room is just as cold as outside, sometimes I open the windows because I feel like I'm boiling.

The longer nights are not something I like, it feels like I've been awake a lot longer.

As for food, its just boiling cinnamon for coffee. But since I've taken an affinity for cooking, I'm willing to experiment.

Fall and winter are my favorite seasons just because I'm not usually a big fan of heat and bugs, both of which summer and spring have in abundance.

But I love bundling too. I just really love sweaters and boots and all the winter/fally things that I can only break out then.

I live in California so our winter is wimpy, but fall and winter are my favorite seasons as well! I really like being able to wear big sweaters and boots and jackets with fuzzy hoods. And sleeping with the window open, but with 4 blankets on. I especially love having the window cracked open when it's raining during the winter. Ahhh, so relaxing. And I really like how it gets dark at like 5pm. I'm such a night owl; I can't stand the sun. Overcast days and nighttime are when I thrive, so winter brings me to life. o3o

Also, I love how we get to eat tons of unhealthy food during winter and it's totally socially acceptable. Like, I could eat 13 cookies in one day, and everyone is just like "yeah, same."

I love that I can go walking any time, day or night, and not have to worry about my dogs overheating. It's easier to throw a dog coat on them in cold weather compared to keeping them safe in a heat wave during summer. I don't have to limit our exercise to certain times of the day. It opens up a number of opportunities we would miss out on in the summer.

I really enjoy snow and even ice. I think it makes the whole world look fresh and new. It's such a beautiful, peaceful time. It's a great time to explore the outdoors, take photos, etc.

After all the fun outdoors I find it enjoyable to return indoors, warm up, drink some hot tea, and settle down. It makes me appreciate it more.

The joy of waking up at 5 am to shovel some nice snow from and around your car if you want to be on time; The absolute delight of being woken up by trucks that are removing snow from sidewalks and roads; The fantastic moment when you live on a hill and the pavement is icy as hell; How fabulous it is to get 'slushed' on by a car passing by.

But also ... I love the eerie, dark and quiet winters. When people are barely outside and it's super dark out. The roads are illuminated but it's beautiful and peaceful. I also love snowstorm (being outside, in fact). It's amazing.

I'm a Canadian born and raised. At times, I find myself both enjoying winter and hating it at the same time haha.

I find chopping firewood to be quite enjoyable as well, it's a nice bit of exercise, and the satisfaction of refining a resource I know I'm gonna use is good too. (May also be due to the added benefit of being a major stress reliever, thwacking things with a big ol' axe is my jam)

Except when they migrate inside! Darn spiders think my bathroom is rent free, which can be a predicament to say the least x-)

Ahhh yeah holiday eating is the best, I love all the offbeat hors d'oeuvres that come to the table. Lately I've been craving celery sticks with cheez-whiz, topped with pimento stuffed olives. Probably not the kind of seasonal food most people would assume, haha.

Not many things more pleasing than an untouched field of snow, reinvigorates that notion of a world not yet fully discovered.

Canadian here as well, definitely feel ya on the commuter's aspect of Winter. The season definitely doesn't let us reap its benefits without some struggle. Had to break out the lock de-icer recently, realized that having a 20 year old car has its downsides, no remote start or keyless locks lol.

Not just an axe, I use a sledgehammer and wedge, and a reciprocating saw. I do this several hours, all this free time bugs me.

I'm originally from So-Cal and we get a lot of bugs pretty much all the time since it doesn't really get cold, cold( cold for where I'm from in CA is usually 50s fahrenheit and rainy though sometimes it has gotten colder). It's pretty rare though, usually it's 60 and higher during the day even in the middle of winter.

I've since moved to the east coast for my masters degrees and now I live in Manhattan for a second masters at NYU currently so I'm getting to experience actual winter and stuff with snow which is amazing. Yes, I'm freezing my ass off, but all the pretty snow once it actually hits winter anyway. There hasn't been snow in NYC yet, so at the very least no mosquitoes during winter. It's too cold out for them. I was at Buffalo though for my first masters which I just graduated from this May so, I do have some experience with winter since this is my third year living on the east coast though.

Also, I have a phobia of spiders so spiders can go die in a ditch somewhere, but east coast meant tons of mosquitoes. I moved to NYC this summer and was getting besieged by mosquitoes everywhere I went; it was horrible. -_-;

I like having an excuse for being cold - I'm generally chilly all year round, but at least in the winter, I can share empathetic nods with everyone else who is shivering :P

I also love breaking out the hot chocolate with whipped cream and marshmallows <3

We rarely get worth-while snow over here, but when we do, I like standing out in it at night, and just taking in the silence and the general atmosphere.

Oh that's rough. I don't have a remote start either. Therefore, I need to remove the ice from the car and all the snow that has build up on it. It takes literal ages. More often than not, I just commute and take the bus (but then, I'm freezing my ass off on the sidewalk). There are no in between :(

I'm not a huge fan of winter, but I like the coziness aspect of it. Like, huddling under a blanket in the warmth of your house while there's a raging blizzard going on outside. I also like that I can wear more of my wardrobe and bust out my talls boots, warmer jackets and touques.

I feel like if I didn't have to drive I would like winter more, haha! Between the ice and the dumb people, getting around on the roads in my city during winter can be not so fun.

Ah yeah, I definitely keep the wedge and maul by my side for the real tough cords, never had to break out the saw yet. My preference, if the wood allows is this old double-head my grandfather used to use, it's wonderfully weighted and has the sturdiest, yet lightest haft I've handled. It's an old axe so I'm not sure how many winters it has left but I'm thinking I might just restore it when the time comes.

Definitely nice when the mosquitoes are no longer a factor, I'd actually say I think I dislike mosquitoes more than the little 8-legged home invaders. I tend to never go barefoot indoors so I'm never too worried about my biggest spider related fear, which is feeling one skitter across my skin. We don't often get many web-weavers indoors, so it's not TOO often we get spiders committing aerial assaults from the ceiling.

It's sooo nice. It's like the snow dampens the sounds of the world -and being cloaked in the night, it's like the closest thing to being truly free.

I used public transit to commute last year and I definitely prefer the car, even if I gotta dig it out, to me it beats sitting in a sardine can full of sickly disgruntled people. And our transit is always either so early or late that the safe bet is to get to the stop and wait in the crappy weather for like 10 minutes. My new job is a half hour commute to so there's that lol, even if I could bus straight to work, I'm a human ashtray, like to have my smoke before work.

Oh man, the drivers around here are ridiculous and the snow has barely graced our presence. You'd think living in an area prone to snow, people would be accustomed to it, but the amount of people crawling along 20kmh under the speed limit in barely challenging weather is hair-tearingly frustrating. Thankfully I've got new winter tires and FWD so I'm expecting to do pretty well on the roads.

When I was a kid I would sleep in my parents' guest room whenever there was a spider. My phobia isn't a great as it used to be when I was younger, but it's still there. I'm not running terrified from small spiders anymore at least.

There's still some mosquitoes. I killed one in my room earlier today actually, but it's been the first one I've seen in a while since most of them have been hibernating. I assume once the weather starts getting colder to the point of actual snow they'll hopefully start to drop and then the pure bliss of not having to worry about being bitten. Mosquitoes love me and I hate it. Yesterday and today was the first time it dropped to the 20s-30s since it's mostly been fall weather up until this point but it was in the high 20s-low thirties so New York City didn't get snow though. Upstate New York from what I heard did though.

I think all the things I love have been mentioned? I only really skimmed the board haha. I'll say mine anyway, hope no one minds. Someone mentioned wearing layers, which is something I'm a fan of for sure. No bugs is also highkey great :D I love it when it's below 0 degrees celsius (32F), breathing subzero air like that punches you in the lungs in a very different way than higher temperatures. I love the crunch of walking on snow, and how snowfall dulls all noise. I love that snow brings people together in a different way in terms of playing outside, I mean I'm 26 and it has been less than a year since my last snowman AND my last snowball fight. And to top that off, snow is beautiful, there's really nothing like it. I also love seeing spring emerge from winter WAY more than seeing autumn turn into winter. Autumn is so overrated. Even on Subeta the winter events are better! Luminaire, Fireside, Survival, Masquerade .. LOVE IT :D

That's crazy, November skeeters, who woulda thunk it. Ahhh Upstate, that's the place I'd wanna go if I went to NY, I've heard some pretty crazy weird stories from a friend who lives near there.

Great reasons! I agree the difference in the air is very refreshing, it feels so much cleaner, which oddly enough (And I know nobody asked but I'm here to blab lol) makes it harder for me to have a cigarette outside, so I switch to chewing tobacco (Minty fresh flavour, combined with the cold air, it's like Excel on steroids). My only beef with Winter > Spring is that after the plows have come through, when the snow melts, there's gravel absolutely eeeveryyywhere, which makes for a really slushy nasty mess. But then an upside is, when the snow is melting on fields and such, you get that really thin frozen marbling of snow on the grass, and which you step on those patches, man, talk about a satisfying crunch.

And heck yeah! I was absent from Subeta for such a long time after I created, but I'm back with something of a vengeance, and I've already gone hard spending in the Steamworks, ready as heck for Masquerade.

Lol, my first masters was upstate. I was living in Buffalo for the last two years before moving to New York City this August. Unfortunately I have no random horror stories though the roads were really empty. I always found driving in Buffalo weird because the roads were pretty hard to see at night because of tiny little road signs so that took a bit of getting used to and obviously driving in snow. I avoided driving in snow most of the time though since I was mostly just driving to school and appointments or to the grocery store which weren't that far away anyway, but I switched my driver's license to a NY state one shortly after I moved. It was just easier that way since I eventually leased a car there to have a NY state license but said car's title has now been transferred to my parents in CA since my mom's been driving it around.

They're London underground mosquitoes because yeah, I googled it and they're their own weird breed of weird mutant mosquitoes.

Also, related to the topic, but I prefer winter air to summer air, by far. The air during the summer always feels muggy, hot and just congested because of the heat trapping in all that bad air( it happens in CA in LA during the summer too) and it's even worse on the east coast due to the humidity so that crisp winter air feels so much more refreshing because it's not bogged down by the feeling of too much water in the air.

It's indeed very 'can of sardine' to take the public transit. I'm used to it but during the winter, with your coat and your boots ... I absolutely hate it. I hate it even more when bus lines are behind on schedule and you just freeze your ass off and the line of humans just grow bigger and bigger. When it shows up: it's packed! I also live in a "cheap" area and a lot of people are incredibly rude and unecessary unpleasant. It's basically cold for everyone y'know.

Don't get me started when the bus gets stuck somewhere or 'slip' on ice and bump into another car.

I'm glad my mother is giving me a ride to college. In exchange, I need to shovel haha. I don't smoke but a lot of my friends do and they get very restless in a bus haha.

YES THE PUDDLE SQUEAKYCRUNCHES they are the best. I've gotten honked at several times because I walked next to the sidewalks to crunch puddles on the quiet roads back home. I do my best to not think of the gravelslush, last winter I didn't have any good winterboots and I kept drenching my socks in slush ): I got new boots this year so I'm ready :D

Definitely some good cases for Winter there lol. I think most people would agree just on the basis of no more mutant skeeters.

Definitely sounds like a solid trade there. I know I'd take it, much less stressing about driving oneself, and much more sightseeing and singing along to carols.

Always a boon going into the season well prepared, new boots are always a good investment.