Winter Thriving Guide
Ritual, resolution, and how to love the season everyone hates
Happy Monday, good afternoon, good evening to my fellow melancholic depressives and welcome to your comprehensive, all-in-one guide to loving winter.
There are two parts. The first is free, and is about rituals and finding joy in the winter season. The second is for paid subscribers and outlines what to do with the weird, depressing week between Christmas and New Year’s Eve. I share my detailed approach to resolutions: how I reflect, journal, plan, and set & achieve my goals. If you’d like to read the full piece, please consider upgrading your subscription.
Winter lasts from the twenty-first of December until the twentieth of March. From Christmas until the first warm-ish day of spring, everyone in the city is always complaining. These are the “worst months” in New York. Muscle through them, we’re told. Put on the big coat, keep your head down, rot in your bed, order delivery, and wait until spring.
What a waste. These are some of the best, most life-giving months of the year. Only a fool would squander them.
Winter is wrongly associated with coldness, death, sadness, and the endings of things, when it is really about warmth, birth, joy, and the beginnings of things. In a season that almost seems designed to bring you down, I say go there, down into the depths of yourself, and take the opportunity to cleanse your soul with hot water and steel wool. It may take a lot of scrubbing.
You can cleanse yourself through both ritual and resolution.
Almost everyone, every year, does some form of both. But it’s usually a passive process: wear a big sweater, make the Christmas ham, promise to go to the gym more. While I love a big sweater, a Christmas ham, and a half-assed New Year’s resolution, I encourage you to double, triple, quadruple down. Take it a step further this year and really engage with the season. Jack Frost wants to catch you on your heels. Not this year—now’s the time to get on your toes and find your momentum.
Rituals
How to love the season everyone hates
Rituals could be described as little actions, routines, and gestures of thankfulness and thoughtfulness. This winter, we’re engaging all of our senses with “high vibration” rituals grounded in reality and permanence. We are forgoing overhead lighting, streaming services, scented room sprays, thin polyester clothes, takeout, “hot 100” music, dry hands, and wet hair. That’s how most people do winter—and that’s why they’re miserable.
We’re going to be having a ball.
Sight
Ephemeral beauty & light
bright morning light • candle light • beeswax candles • wood fires • ballet • the nutcracker • nature of course
The days are shorter, so morning light is more necessary than ever. Start your day early. No sunglasses. Certainly no AirPods. Raw, unfiltered sunlight needs to penetrate your corneas. I wouldn’t stare directly at the sun, but I would honestly come close.
At night, light beeswax candles and tip-toe to the bathroom with a solid brass chamberstick. Blue, fluorescent, or overhead lights will make you look bad and feel sad. Get yourself to a hearth, sit there, and watch the wood burn. Take your eyes to something beautiful and festive like the ballet. I don’t care if it’s a local high school or the New York City Ballet at Lincoln Center—it’s Nutcracker time.
Sound
Soul-lifting, orchestral, or nothing at all
bill evans trio • gregorian chant • bach’s chorales • rain • wind • snow • silence
I’m not coming out against Christmas music. I would never slander Nat King Cole like that. But you’re going to hear Christmas music this year whether you like it or not. You’ll get your fix. Try listening to the Bill Evans Trio in the morning, then moving to Gregorian Chant, Bach’s Chorales, or NOTHING. The silence of winter is very holy and very ancient. Allow the rain, the wind, and your footfalls to have their place.
Smell
Only the real thing will do
fresh air • cloved oranges • pine needles • wood fires • broth • chocolate chip cookies • gingerbread
We’re not participating in simulacra this winter. Just say no to “wood fire,” “pine,” or, God forbid, “pumpkin pie” scented things, whatever they may be.
The best winter smells can easily be gathered outside or found emanating from your stovetop. Fresh air, cloved oranges, pine needles, wood fires, bone broths, Sunday roasts, and chocolate chip cookies are the only suitable smells for the season. If you want your house to smell like gingerbread, make some gingerbread.
Taste
Homemade, the old fashioned way
milk • honey • butter • stock • broth (again) • mulled wine • beef • oxtail • roast chicken • potato gratin • vanilla ice cream • homemade desserts • grandma’s recipes
Winter is not the season to skimp on the butter or skip breakfast. This is the season of warm milk and honey. Start every day with a whole milk latte, then move to homemade chicken stock, tea, or bone broth, and drink mulled wine after dinner. Put on an apron and attempt a challenging-but-worth-it traditional winter recipe: coq au vin, beef bourguignon, beef Wellington, oxtail stew, whole roast chicken. Transform the Humble Potato into a thing of greatness with heavy cream and Gruyère.
When it comes to desserts, I’m sorry, but store-bought is not fine. It’s a Personal Policy of mine to not eat store-bought desserts other than ice cream (they taste bad???). A homemade dessert, on the other hand, should never be refused and always tastes good.
When it comes to cooking, now is the time to call your grandma and ask her for that recipe, or better yet, make it with her. When you go over to her house, take pictures of all her handwritten recipe cards. The world’s best recipes are all passed down matrilineally.
Touch
Natural materials, little details, warmth
powdered sugar • permanence • classic manicures • hand & cuticle cream • 100% wool • scarves, hats, mittens • leather • strength training • sauna • dry hair
I’m interpreting “touch” in a few ways here: details, gifts, hands, exercise, clothes. This year, we’re going all out with the little holiday touches: powdered sugar, twinkle lights, ribbons, double-thick Christmas cards. We’re giving gifts of permanence, things that feel nice to hold. (This is my only rule of thumb for giving truly great gifts: give something the recipient will ideally keep forever.)
When it comes to your hands, there are four manicure options for winter (or for life, in my opinion): classic red, cool pink nude, French, or nothing. When I first moved to New York from California, people in New York were still intimidating and mean. An older coworker essentially shamed me into using hand cream and, frankly, I owe her one. (This cuticle cream is amazing, too.)
There is no such thing as bad weather, only the wrong clothing.
Invest in 100% wool clothing: wool socks, wool hats, wool scarves, wool mittens, wool coats. My Christmas list this year is basically only wool accessories and antique oil paintings. You really don’t need to buy new. There are like six thousand vintage wool coats on The Real Real that cost less than the ones from Aritzia (which aren’t even 100% wool!).
A PSA to my West Coasters now living in NYC
To thrive in winter, you will need (from the ground up):
A thick, rubber-soled leather shoe. It doesn’t have to be a boot; a lug loafer is perfect.
Wool socks.
Merino wool leggings/base layer (for the 10 degree days).
Camisoles and thermals.
Wool sweaters.
An enormous puffer coat that goes to your knees, ideally with a hood.
A wool scarf.
Wool mittens.
And a wool hat.
A bonus NYC secret no one tells you: Uniqlo sells these slim puffer jackets that slip under your tailored wool coat without adding bulk. You can even fold them down to match your coat’s neckline.
A note on winter exercise and wet hair
Your grandmother is right. You’ll catch a cold if you go to sleep with wet hair or don’t dress properly. This year, we’re not allowing ourselves to exercise until total exhaustion, walking home in a cold sweat. It’s not good for the metabolism. We’re strength training in ballet wrap cardigans, hitting the sauna, showering and drying our hair, and changing into clean, warm clothes every single time.
Soul
Allow your heart to rest
stillness • repentance • forgiveness • confession • incense • just sitting there
Soul is not one of the five senses, but for my purposes, it is. I understand the desire to rest your soul at the end of the year, but there’s a huge difference between restorative rest and “rotting” in bed.
Your soul doesn’t want to lie in bed all day. Your soul is probably seeking stillness, and stillness will never be found on your phone. To be still, you just need to stop moving. Sit down at your local café and don’t look at your phone for ten minutes. It can be that easy.
If you’re Catholic—or even if you’re not—you can also go sit in a church. The doors are usually unlocked during daylight hours. It is usually quiet. It usually smells nice, like incense. You don’t have to pray, you don’t have to do anything. Just sit there and be still. (More on this behind the paywall—going and sitting in a church alone is one of the first things I do as a part of my new year planning.)
In winter, we yearn for stillness, but we also yearn for repentance and forgiveness. All of us have failed this year, in one way or another, in ways big and small. In winter, I find it helpful to acknowledge the ways I’ve let myself and my loved ones down, apologize where necessary, and pray for forgiveness. It is truly astonishing how healing and restorative a simple acknowledgement like this can be. Once you apologize—and this is critical—you also have to forgive yourself.
If you want to take it a step further—and I’m only really speaking to my fellow Catholics at this point—I highly recommend going to Confession before Christmas Mass. There’s a formal way to do Confession, but after the initial preamble, you can talk to a priest the way you’d talk to a friend. They will understand. Some of the best advice I’ve ever received has been in the confessional.
Regardless, get yourself to a candlelight Mass or Vigil and then get Christmas cocktails with your friends. Your soul will thank you.
Resolutions
How to use the weird week after Christmas to enter the new year with clarity and vigor
I hope these rituals and wool clothes carry you happily into March. But beware… there’s a bump on the horizon where the wheels always fall off: the weird week after Christmas and before the new year. This is the week where you’ll find yourself eating a half dozen cookies for breakfast and being a bitch for no reason. This is the week that I use, almost exclusively, to dream and to plan.
I don’t set New Year’s resolutions anymore because the concept is too played out in my mind. After so many years of attempt and failure, I just can’t take them seriously. But I do take My Proprietary Approach VERY seriously, which is why it works.
If you’d like to try something new this year and follow my approach, I outline it in detail below. It will work exceptionally well if you want to pursue creative interests while working a corporate/day job.
You will need: