My efforts to romanticize winter to get through the worst time of the year have worked so well that I think winter might legitimately be my favorite season. I keep seeing things that overwhelm me with their beauty.

Tall spruce trees heavily laden with snow in the blue-gray twilight.

A church spire stretching above snow-laden pines toward a sky spangled with stars bright and cold as diamonds.

A sky striped with pale blue and lavender (like January) that reflected perfectly on the dampness of the road, so it felt like I was driving through the sky or across the sea.

A faint nighttime fog that made the light from every streetlight, storefront, and house stretch upward in a perfect pillar, and then waking up in the morning to see every branch and twig of every tree covered in hoarfrost.

Looking out my bedroom window to see the full moon shining on a snow-covered landscape making the whole world glow bright as day.

The shadows of trees across the snow-covered ground making an intricate pattern of black and white.

The other seasons get their beauty from life, warmth, plants, color, but from where I stand in winter, it’s almost too overwhelming to appreciate all of it. Winter strips it back to the bare minimum, showing the beauty at the very core of the world. The nights may be longer, but they’re brighter, because while summer has its lights, in winter, the whole world is luminous.