Invitation: Pleasures of winter

I love so many things about Christmas, even though it's always kind of a rush and it involves more extrovert stuff than I'm really comfortable with. I love the music, and the food, and all the many opportunities to be creative (cooking, making crafty homemade presents, gift-wrapping, decorating, even choosing cards). People do daily December posts or write fannish Advent calendars. Yuletide.

And then it's over ... and there's just the season of long nights and sniffles and snow-shoveling, boots leaving puddles everywhere, having to put on a coat to take the garbage out, and months to get through before the farmer's market opens in June.

So I want to throw open an invitation here: Share your favorite pleasures of winter! Share recipes! Share stories of your family, born or found! Tell me what you look forward to doing every year. Give me excuses to make things out of paper or fabric, or to cook show-offy foods, or to put something else up when the tree comes down. Invent a reason why a person would post every day or try to time a story specifically to the slow months of winter. (If it's not winter where you are, gloat if you must.)

I'll start with one thing that I do look forward to every year: the citrus fruit that the high school music department sells in January. There is no orange better than a January band orange.