As Canadians, we feel it is our distinctive right to endlessly complain about winter. Because let’s face it, it often feels as though there’s not much else to do during the 5 month-long cold stretch. But we are an adverse nation, and the truth of the matter is there’s actually quite a lot to love about winter.
Embracing the Outdoors
While the cold may seem like a strong deterrent to venturing out your door, the fact of the matter is there’s a lot of fun and beauty to be experienced out there. Once you bundle up appropriately (we recommend wearing many layers) and engage in a fun activity such as skiing, sledding, or hiking, you’ll realize that winter is an extraordinary time of year that possesses a magical and enchanted quality.
The Winter Wonderland Factor
Speaking of magic and enchantment, Canada is a land of staggering beauty, and this beauty is not diminished by the onset of winter. The soft blanket of snow that falls upon the untouched fields and trees, the mix of evergreen leaves with fine particles of delicate white, and the ethereal quality that grips the land in these cold months is not something the world over gets to experience. Lots of nations experience winter, but a Canadian winter is something special altogether.
Binary Appreciation
This last consideration might be a little philosophical, but it’s a simple concept that everyone can relate to, and it’s something we all experience whether we’re aware of it or not. The idea is this, we humans experience most areas of life under the binary principle, which is to say we derive meaning from experiences based on their opposite. We appreciate happiness because we feel sorrow, we value comfort because we experience discomfort, we seek out love because we know the pain of loss. And we also appreciate warm weather more because we experience 5 months of cold.
This system of reference creates feelings of positive expectations and desire. This is in large part why terms like spring fever and summer love have made their way into the lexicon of human experience. So, one of the many benefits of winter is that it causes us to look forward to summer, and allows us to appreciate it more once it gets here.