The Midwinter Season of Creativity
In-between days and the rest and regeneration that we all need.
I’ve been in the water every single day since winter solstice.
Entering in the dark of morning feels best, slipping into inky black endless depths. If I didn’t spend multiple days a week at this exact same spot, I would most likely be afraid of what might lurk in the dark waters. Instead, there’s something known, something intimate about meeting this space where I can’t see more than the reflection of lights across the bay. Hints of bioluminescence hang in the water, flickers of light in the dark.
An hour later and it feels too late, like the winter morning magic has evaporated, the stillness and potential that the waking hours hold soaked back up into the gray clouds.
Today we’re exactly a week past the winter solstice, through Christmas, yet still a few days away from the new year. It’s a bit of a static time, a bit of a holding period.
It’s a tired time, a dark time, a lethargic time.
In Swedish, these days are called mellandagarna, the in-between days.
In the U.S. it’s sometimes referred to as Dead Week—even if you don’t have the luxury of full days off, there’s often not much going on. As journalist Helena Fitzgerald put it a few years ago, “the only collective chance for deep rest all year.” Leave it to productivity-driven culture to refer to anything other than functional work time as “dead.”
calls it Witching Week, which feels apt. Whatever we call it, it’s a murky, hazy space in between. We’re neither coming nor going. Time stretches and contracts, it becomes hard to say what day it is. Meals aren’t really meals anymore, just some leftover cheese and whatever remnants are in the cookie tins. Sleep as much as you want, you still rise with the lethargy of deep winter.This liminal space doesn’t want to be formed into something. It wants to be left alone.
“Midwinter is a process not an event; it is lived, experiential.”
- Katherine May
In honor of the solstice last week, Gale Straub and I released a special mini episode of Creative Fuel, a conversation and winter solstice reflection with
. She’ll be one of our guests on season two of the podcast, which will hopefully be coming in early 2024.In our conversation, Katherine pointed out to me how important it is to honor the season of solstice. It’s not just a day, it’s an in-between time. A moment of pause, a moment in the darkness. As she writes, “Midwinter is a process not an event; it is lived, experiential.”
We might be a week past that turning point on the calendar, but we’re still deep in this season. The word solstice in its earlier form was solstitium, from sol, the Latin word for "sun," and sistere, meaning "to stand still.” A time when the sun stands still.
What if we took this time to stand still too?
I read this week about the Celtic tradition of Omen Days, from
. They begin on December 26th and extend through to January 6th. Each day represents a calendar month in the coming year.The idea is to look and listen for signs, symbols and messages—for you and your life but— more importantly of all with the time we are in just now—that speak collectively to us as all on this our planetary home.
Paying attention to see what arises. Observing with acute awareness to see what one notices. Letting it sink in to feel what it might mean.
Despite my tired, lethargic state, after reading Kerri’s piece yesterday, I felt like my antennae were on high alert. The cedar branches seemed greener. I felt like I could hear more birds. In the afternoon, a rainbow appeared out the window. What would that mean for next February?
What would I see and feel and hear today that might hold a premonition for March?
This in between-time can so often feel fidgety, like we must do something with it. Honestly, it’s not usually a time when my mood feels at its best. That could be the sugar let-down, but it’s also the season. All I want to do is retreat, pull the tentacles in.
It’s so easy to want to resist that, push through, find something to distract. I know from experience that it’s better not to, or a darker creature will rear its head further down the line in January.
I’m coming off of writing a daily newsletter for three weeks straight. It’s a funny thing to just stop, to shift into an entirely different pace. You wonder what will happen when there isn’t any more momentum to push you forward. Because this liminal space that’s foggier, murkier, darker? It’s more uncomfortable, more unknown.
The magic of a dark morning lit by candlelight and wrapped in a wool blanket with a book eventually wears off, and then you’re left in the winter daylight wondering what is next. A Christmas tree that looked festive in the darker hours now looks garish and outdated, is it too soon to toss it out? You want something in the background, but if you hit play on more holiday music you might scream.
You start reaching for your phone, instinctually knowing that there’s a good hit of dopamine if you refresh a page, the email, a newsfeed. But you know that won’t serve you either. The fidgetiness starts to creep in. The mind starts to wander, finding its way into those fog-enshrouded darker corners. At other times you might be tempted to go work on something to distract yourself, but you know that you are too tired to start a new project.
It’s a bit harsh this time, a bit unruly, a bit disappointing, but we need this period too. This fallow, darker, slower time.
We need more than just a few days. We need a creative season of midwinter.
“There are such a lot of things that have no place in summer and autumn and spring. Everything that’s a little shy and a little rum. Some kinds of night animals and people that don’t fit in with others and that nobody really believes in. They keep out of the way all the year. And then when everything’s quiet and white and the nights are long and most people are asleep—then they appear.” - Tove Jansson, Moominland Midwinter
For many years now I’ve advocated for January to be an in-between month. Not a beginning time, but a rumination time. Extra room for ideas to marinate, to percolate. Remove the pressure for hitting the “start” button.
Because the pressure abounds. Pressure to tie everything up, move forward with clarity. The urge to set intentions, to clean up the messes, to hit the ground running next week is strong. We want to hit an easy refresh button, to start anew. After all, who doesn’t like a new beginning, especially when this in-between time feels so murky, so confusing?
But the thought of what’s required for all that newness? It’s too exhausting to think about. I know I can’t think about 2024 until I have slept some more. We need more time to recover.
reflects on resolutions:We can trace the word back to the Latin resolvere, meaning “loosen” or “release.” Now this is a metaphor, an image, that I can embrace. It suggests I am enough on day one of the new year. I don’t need to do or be more; perhaps I actually need less.”
What can we loosen? What can we release?
The expectations for starters.
Creativity, like nature, like us, is cyclical, and we all need this season of rest and regeneration. Midwinter is a process, a pause, a moment.
Whatever they hold, these in-between days, this in-between season… let it all be what it needs to be.
No attempt to sculpt it, shape it, mold it.
Listen to what it asks of us.
-Anna
What is coming in this newsletter in 2024?
I don’t know!
I really am adamant about leaving the first few weeks of January as an open, brainstorming time. That being said, Gale and I are working (ahem: slowly) on season 2 of the podcast (which you can find on Apple, Spotify, or anywhere else you listen to podcasts) and I am sure that there are good things to come in this newsletter in the new year.
So if you want to see this work continue… please help by becoming a paid subscriber. Your support helps to keep the lights on and the coffee flowing.
Sleep. Naps. Reading books. Lighting candles. And also, this good creative midwinter music: Ultimate Calm with Ólafur Arnalds.
I often feel a bit guilty that this is the time of year, these longest dark days, these cold (or should be cold) days, is the time I feel most alive, since it's hard for so many people. It's in the heat and lightness of summer that I grump and wilt, and feel alive again as the days shorten and the weather cools. I love the way the scant sunlight plays with clouds and snowfall, how it hits the river and ice on the lake (or what should be ice on the lake). And so many more hours of starlight!
It's an active time where I live, too, with so many things to do outdoors in the snow and on the ice. Even walks are something delightfully different. And yet, as you say, it's not really a time I think of as "productive," not in the way our society demands. It's a time for me to sink into the world, this beauty, thinking of what's resting under the snow as I wander in the woods. And even to spend more time with friends sharing stories.
But what I wouldn't give to be able to go into the water everyday as you describe! That sounds so beautiful.
This is at least the second time The Omen Days has crossed my radar in recent days. It comes from one of the main parts of my ancestral world, how did I not know of it? But of course it resonates deep and hard with me - at the same time I was also thinking of rereading Katherine May's book Wintering. All this feels like ways to help the scratchy restless bits of me, this time of year. So, as always, so timely and thank you.