Winter sucks.  If you disagree with me, you are wrong.  I will do my best to demonstrate why I think that is.  (That there where I said ‘think’, that was false humility.  I’m sorry.)  Just in case the unthinkable happens, and someone who doesn’t know me reads this post, I live in Indiana.  I recognize that there are many places in the world where winter is far worse than it is here, but as I will demonstrate, it’s still pretty awful here.

Before I get too deep into my argument, I’d first like to rebut those of my opposition.  ”But Corin,” my ill-informed opposition may say, “winter is a beautiful season!  It snows and everything is pristine and white and peaceful!” This may be true on, say, three days of winter.  Sadly, this argument disintegrates upon further inspection.  First, it assumes that it snows.  In Indiana, that is by no means a regular occurrence.  Yes, it snows more often in winter than it does in the other seasons, but not by much.  I’m not going to go look up this statistic, but I figure we get 3-4 decent accumulations of snow per season in winter.  Considering that winter spans roughly 4 months, that’s a once a month occurrence.  Next part of their argument: it’s beautiful – pristine, white, peaceful.  Even a winter-hating Grinch like me can admit that gently falling snow is pretty and peaceful.  Until you go outside.  The pristine aspect lasts all of a few hours, until cars start driving around, promptly turning that pristine white powder into gritty, grey, slippery, nasty, slush.  So pristine is pretty much out.  White is out.  Peaceful is pretty irrelevant – whether it’s peaceful is fairly unrelated to the manner of precipitation on the ground.

Another possible wrench they might try to throw into the unstoppable gears of my logic machine could be “But Corin, winter brings with it such delightful things as Christmas, Christmas break, two-hour delays, and snow days!”  Sadly, they would again be wrong.  First, regarding Christmas, the holiday originated in Israel, right?  I just checked, and the average low temperature for Jerusalem in December is 42 degrees.  Not that wintery.  In addition, I spent Christmas in San Diego this year, and it was in the 60s, so it is very possible to have Christmas without Indiana-style winter.  Next, Christmas break.  As I just showed that winter isn’t required for Christmas, it clearly isn’t required for Christmas break.  In fact, Christmas break would be much more enjoyable without the cold temperatures and possible black slush keeping you inside.  (I went whale watching the day after Christmas, what did you do?)  Next, two-hour delays and snow days are very nice, but overall I find that they bring much more pain than they do pleasure.  Every time you hear that it’s going to snow the next day, or that it’s going to be really cold, you inevitably get your hopes up.  Maybe, just maybe, we’ll have a snow day tomorrow, you think.  Maybe you even try to keep yourself from getting your hopes up.  After all, you’ve been hurt before.  But it never works.  And the next day, you wake up and look at the clock, hoping it’s way past when school starts and your mom just didn’t wake you up, only to see a glaring 6:15 blinking at you angrily.  On the rare occasions when you do get a day off it’s nice, but it doesn’t make up for all the emotional trauma caused by those days when you didn’t.  Especially when your superintendent is one Peggy K. Hinkley.  (It isn’t libel if it’s true, right?)

Really, in shooting down those two (straw) arguments, I’ve pretty much covered mine.  Winter is filled with emotional trauma, nasty black precipitation, and bitter, bitter cold.  I should touch on the cold.  Cold is bad.  That’s why heartless bitches on reality TV are called cold.  Cold is a heartless bitch.  Take today for example.  I had to walk a couple miles to and from various classes at opposite ends of campus.  I have an extremely warm winter coat, awesome leather gloves, a hat I stole from my dad because it’s extra warm, and a scarf I never use because it looks ridiculous.  On this particular winter day, I wore my coat, my hat, my gloves, and had my hood up.  In addition, my coat zips all the way up to just under my nose.  Effectively, the only exposed part of my body was my eyes, nose, and cheeks.  As I walked to class, I noticed that by some miracle of meteorological science, the wind blows directly into your face no matter which direction you’re walking.  My eyes were watering from the cold, and my nose was numb after just a few minutes.  The cold literally hurts your skin, even the measly 8 square inches that are exposed.  So, to summarize, even if you dress up like a pre-2001 Afghan woman, the cold hurts like a bitch.  Because it is one.

Not only does winter suck, winter is the worst season.  Spring has rain (the best form of weather), cool breezes, blooming flowers, new leaves on trees, and delightful allergens in the crisp air.   Summer can get uncomfortably hot, but it is free from school, and you don’t have to look like an  Islamic fundamentalist to exit your home.  Fall has weather almost as nice as spring, and provides welcome relief from summer.  You get to wear jeans and hoodies again, but it’s not so cold that you consider suicide halfway to class.

In summary: November, December, January, Febuary – you are dead to me.  As soon as realistically possible, I’m gonna live somewhere where winter doesn’t cause more pain than the Cruciatus Curse.  Yeah.  I played the Harry Potter card.  Game over, winter.  You lose.  Just give global warming a few centuries, and you’re toast.