Summer must not go unpunished.
The holidays are always a nice distraction from the reality of late November and December in Michigan, which is that we are sliding into months of meteorological despair. Once we snap out of our holiday stupor, we are left in the gray tunnel of doom.
The popular vision of Michigan winter is that it is a time of bitter cold and immobilizing snow. This is true from time to time, but each snowstorm or cold snap is separated from the next by long periods of horrid gray mediocrity. Cold and snow torment us with brute force, but they cannot hold a candle to the long game of psychological torment that this week’s forecast for Detroit, for example, has in store.
Sunday brought a special kind of snow that is not beautiful or significant in amount but will somehow make sidewalks impassable for several days. The National Weather Service tells us that the rest of the week will be “cloudy,” except for Wednesday, which will be “mostly cloudy.” There will be no precipitation and the temperature will not rise above 38º or fall below 26º. This is the true spirit of Michigan winter.
The problem of this grayness is particularly acute now that I live in a space for which I am the sole decorator and in which every item is black, white, chrome, or light wood. If the cone cells in my eyes were to go out this week and I were to lose all ability to see color, I could go days without noticing that anything was amiss.
The Scandinavians offer a solution to all of this gray with Hygge. Hygge, the general concept of coziness and warmth, was exported to the rest of the world in a number of books and articles in the late 2010s. In the years since, its adherents have — in what strikes me as being a terrible fire hazard — surrounded themselves with candles and blankets and throw pillows. Now, with staying home all winter as the order of the day, their ship has finally come in.
My approach to Hygge is a measured one. I drink two mugs of tea each day, own a single unscented candle, and buy the light bulbs that bill themselves as “very warm.” I do have lots of IKEA furniture, but it is less out of a desire for Hygge and more because I am cheap and enjoying the gnawing terror of knowing that the bookshelf near my bed is missing three screws. I have no intention of acquiring throw pillows.
For extremists, the solution to winter is Florida because it does not have winter—or at least anything that would be recognizable as winter to people trained in snowblower use from a young age.
I went to Florida on a family vacation once and made as much of a good-faith effort at open-mindedness as a person could reasonably be expected to make. When it was suggested that we return several years later, I threatened to drive the family minivan into a river.
Florida is not an option.
Perhaps it is my West Michigan Calvinist talking when I say we ought to lean into the suffering. It was February when Rev. Albertus Van Raalte and his group of followers (who had just fled the wicked oppression of Dutch tolerance) arrived at the frozen swamp on Lake Michigan’s eastern shore that would become Holland. They knew what they signed up for with the winter, but that did not stop them. Maybe it was that they enjoyed suffering. Maybe they were holding out for the summer. It was probably both.
The summers are perfect. We have warm days and cool nights. The sun stays up late into the evening. We swim in freshwater lakes which are largely free of creatures that bite and sting. Nobody should live like that all year, though — we would lose our minds.
I went to the beach one day this summer and enjoyed myself. It is unthinkable that such a thing should go unpunished. So here I am, writing black text on a white screen and hoping for a brief break in the clouds on Wednesday so that I might be reassured that I have not lost my color vision.
Distractions
Things I have been reading, watching, and listening to this week.
Nordlandsbanen Minutt for Minutt
Part of Norway’s “slow TV” phenomenon, this is a triumph of Hygge we can all get behind. Originally broadcast by the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation in December of 2012, this program shows the view from the front window of a train as it heads north of the Arctic Circle. It clocks in at just under 10 hours. 1.2 million Norwegians tuned in on the night it premiered. Give it a chance. You will understand why.
Neujahrskonzert 2021 by the Wiener Philharmoniker on PBS
The Vienna Philharmonic has held a new year’s concert every year for decades and the tradition-conscious Austrians will not allow a pandemic to change that. After two weeks of daily COVID testing for the musicians (can you imagine the condition of their nostrils?) the concert went on this year without an audience.
It is the classical music equivalent of drinking a pint of maple syrup—a similar program of Strauss greatest hits and so forth every year, but maybe we deserve to enjoy some of that after a miserable year. If nothing else, you have to admire this commitment to keeping with tradition and starting the year on an optimistic note.
As these things are in the United States, the program is distributed by PBS and hosted by a man with a British accent.