Best Thing About Winter

Winter is the only season people feel obliged to defend, which suggests something about how the argument usually goes.

The entries fall into two groups that are easy to tell apart once you notice them. There are the things winter gives you — snow, frost on a window, the specific quiet of the morning after a fall — and the things winter gives you an excuse for, which is most of the rest.

Heavy blankets, soup, long evenings indoors and hot drinks held in both hands are all available in July and nobody wants them. The season does not create them so much as license them.

Counting them up gives thirty-two of them, and only one survives.

The second group usually wins, and that is worth noticing rather than dismissing. What people like about winter is mostly permission — to stay in, to eat heavily, to do less — and the weather is the excuse rather than the reward. No insects is on the list and does considerably better than its brevity suggests.