Describe a Season You Enjoy

The season I enjoy most is winter, which tends to surprise people, because where I come from everyone complains about it — but I should explain that winter in my region isn't the brutal, months-of-snow kind. It's short, roughly December to early February, and it's the only genuinely cool, dry stretch in an otherwise hot and sticky year, which is exactly why I treasure it.

The weather during those weeks is, frankly, the best we get. The suffocating humidity finally lifts, mornings arrive wrapped in fog so thick you can barely see the end of the street, and by midday it's all bright, gentle sunshine — cool enough for a light jacket, warm enough to sit outside for hours. The evenings have a proper chill to them, the kind that makes a hot drink feel earned. After nine months of sweating through every shirt, that first genuinely cold morning feels almost ceremonial.

My habits change completely with the season, and I think that's half the pleasure. Winter is when street food culture explodes back home — stalls appear on every corner selling steaming rice cakes and sweets that simply don't exist the rest of the year, so half my winter memories involve standing on a foggy pavement burning my fingers on something delicious. It's also wedding and picnic season, since it's the only weather anyone wants to celebrate in, and my own rituals kick in too: long morning walks in the fog, sleeping under a heavy quilt with the fan finally off, and reading in actual sunlight on the roof. There's also the annual theatre of the quilts and sweaters coming out of storage, smelling faintly of mothballs — which sounds unpleasant, but is essentially the official perfume of December in our house. Even tea somehow tastes better in winter, though I accept that claim may not survive scientific scrutiny.

As for why I enjoy it, the practical answer is comfort — my whole country simply functions better at eighteen degrees than at thirty-eight. But the truer answer is scarcity. Because winter only lasts eight or nine weeks, it never gets the chance to become ordinary. You can feel everyone consciously savouring it — parks fill up, families move their evenings outdoors, the entire city seems to be in a slightly better mood. Permanent things get taken for granted; temporary things get appreciated.

There's also a nostalgia layer I can't ignore. Winter meant school holidays, visiting my grandparents' village, and the smell of my grandmother's date-syrup sweets, so the first foggy morning of every year opens a door straight back into my childhood. Some people get that feeling from a song; I get it from a drop in temperature. So while I'd never survive a Scandinavian January, my little eight-week version of winter is, without question, the happiest slice of my year.