Little Steps: Wintering as a Human Tradition
For most of human history, winter was not something to overcome. It was something to adapt to.
Long before electric light, heated offices, and year-round productivity, winter shaped the rhythm of life in very real ways. Days grew shorter, food became scarcer, travel slowed, and communities adjusted accordingly. Winter was understood not as a failure of momentum, but as a season with its own intelligence. So I decided to look deeper into what my body was signalling already.
Across cultures, winter was a time of rest, gathering, and conservation. In agrarian societies, fields lay dormant, and labour shifted inward. People repaired tools, told stories, preserved food, and spent more time in communal spaces. Anthropological records from Northern Europe, East Asia, Indigenous Arctic cultures, and parts of the Mediterranean all show similar patterns: reduced physical output, increased time indoors, shared meals, and rituals centred on light, warmth, and continuity. These practices were not romantic traditions - they were survival strategies.
Modern science helps explain why these rhythms made sense. Reduced daylight affects circadian biology, increasing melatonin production and naturally encouraging longer rest periods (Walker, 2017). Cold temperatures increase metabolic demands, making conservation of energy essential. From a physiological perspective, slowing down in winter wasn’t optional - it was adaptive. The body needed more rest, more warmth, and more predictable routines to stay regulated.
What’s striking is how much modern life resists this reality. We now expect the same output in January as in June, the same pace regardless of daylight or season. Artificial lighting extends our days, screens keep our minds stimulated late into the night, and productivity is treated as a moral constant rather than a seasonal variable. In doing so, we have largely abandoned the practice of wintering.
Psychology and stress research suggest there is a cost to this. Chronic misalignment between environmental conditions and behavioural demands contributes to fatigue, low mood, sleep disturbance, and burnout. Seasonal affective symptoms are not simply about lack of sunlight; they are also about the pressure to perform against the grain of the season. When the world outside slows, but our expectations do not, the nervous system absorbs the conflict.
Traditional winter practices offered more than rest - they offered containment. Gathering around fire or candlelight, sharing food, repeating familiar rituals: these activities reduced uncertainty and strengthened social bonds. Research consistently shows that social connection and predictable routines are key buffers against stress, particularly during times of environmental challenge. Winter gatherings were not entertainment in the modern sense; they were a regulation.
What modern life seems to have forgotten is that slowing down is not the same as stopping. Winter was never about inactivity - it was about different kinds of activity. Reflection instead of expansion. Maintenance instead of growth. Storytelling instead of striving. These quieter modes supported resilience, ensuring people had the energy to re-emerge when conditions changed.
Relearning how to winter does not mean rejecting modern life. It means reintroducing seasonal intelligence into it. Allowing more rest without guilt. Creating warmer, slower evenings. Valuing reflection as much as action. Understanding that energy fluctuates, and that this fluctuation is not a personal failure, but a biological truth.
Perhaps this is why winter feels so uncomfortable now - not because it is inherently bleak, but because we no longer know how to meet it. We have forgotten how to gather inward, how to conserve, how to let the year exhale.
Wintering, at its core, is a form of respect: for the body, for the land, for time itself. And maybe reclaiming even a small part of that tradition - an earlier night, a shared meal, a candle lit against the dark - is one of the quiet ways we can begin to come HOME again.
References
Walker, M. (2017). Why We Sleep. Scribner.
Foster, R. G., & Kreitzman, L. (2004). Rhythms of Life: The Biological Clocks That Control the Daily Lives of Every Living Thing. Yale University Press.
Stearns, P. N. (2013). The Industrial Revolution in World History. Westview Press.
Dunbar, R. (2010). How Many Friends Does One Person Need? Harvard University Press.
American Psychiatric Association. (2022). Seasonal Affective Disorder.