Images of a baby wearing a sash emblazoned with “2014” may have helped you ring in the new year last month. Infant symbolism for the birth of a new year is pretty obvious. And even though starting the calendar on January 1 is rather arbitrary (in fact, England returned to the January 1 new year as late as 1752), we nevertheless raise the New Year’s baby in our arms in the depths of winter. And if we extend the metaphor to the season as well as the holiday, more of us might appreciate this cold and snowy time of year.
Most people love babies. Who can resist such soft skin, chubby cheeks, and bright, shimmering eyes? The pure joy of a laughing baby has been the stuff of countless YouTube videos that we play over and over. There is unquestioned wonder wrapped up in the miracle of an infant.
But admit it. That’s only part of the story. We all know that babies also mean ear-piercing wailing and copious amounts of unspeakable bodily fluids (and solids) emanating from all kinds of orifices. There is nothing discreet, controlled, or pleasant about a baby’s bodily functions. And frankly, babies are terrible conversationalists. Goo-gooing and cooing can hold your interest for only so long.
But most people look past the crying and the poop and the barf and the constant babbling and, for the most part, adore the astonishing yet fragile beauty of a life beginning.
So why can’t we do the same with winter? Sure, much of it is grotesque—inhuman cold, treacherous ice, dirty snow piles. Sadly, it seems many (most?) who live in northern climes fixate on the negative—winter’s poop, barf, and ear-piercing crying. But winter is full of astounding beauty, too—the soft blanket of an Alberta clipper snow, spare tree branches turned to delicate white lace, the sculpted symmetry of drifts on the edge of a country road, even the marvel of air so frozen that it seizes your lungs a bit as you breathe in. Just as we coo over the smooth mounds of a baby’s cheeks, we can embrace the unique splendor of winter. Yes, the snow will crust over with ice and dirt, and the wind chill will sear your cheeks, but the baby will also soon fill its diapers, and its gas bubble will keep you up all night because of the screaming.
The true wonder of a baby, though, is not so much what it is today but what it will become. What draws us into babies like hummingbirds to nectar is their potential. A baby is a crucible of possibility, a sprouting seed that will blossom into something unknown—though we hope something beautiful—in years to come. Even before a baby is born, we are imagining playing ball in the backyard, standing at the school door on the first day of kindergarten, taking pictures of beautiful and handsome young people in their prom finery, applauding with pride at a senior recital, dropping off a young adult at a college dormitory, walking down the wedding aisle, celebrating that first professional job or that newly minted graduate degree, and on and on. As we stare into those wide saucerlike eyes of infancy, we ask ourselves, “Who are you? Who will you be?”
Just as we conjure the possibilities of the new baby’s blossoming personhood, we must know that the cold winter of the new year holds the promise of spring beauty and summer plenty. We imagine the possibilities of our gardens and vacations in the forge of the frozen season. Just as the human body needs rest for full health, our Midwestern soil needs the fallow time of cold and snow to prepare for its full bounty. Sometimes, our winter climate is directly responsible for much of the beauty we enjoy not many months later. One spring when I was shopping for a redbud at a local garden shop, I asked why some of the trees had the characteristic pink buds and others didn’t. The clerk told me that the ones that the budless ones were raised in a southern climate—the redbud needs a frigid winter for its characteristic crimson-hued blossoms to burst forth.
Here in February, we are in the time of preparation. In ancient Celtic culture, Brigid, the goddess of light (and later, Christianity’s St. Brigid) is lighting the fires of creativity, purification, and healing, readying the world for new life to flame forth. In some Brigid celebrations, young people prepare a bed for Brigid and place an iconic doll in it, reminding us again that this special time of year is a slumbering baby about to flourish into its own magnificence. This time when we imagine, prepare, and stoke our fires is the necessary—and beautiful—prelude to what is to come soon, just as we nurture a gorgeous infant or—as we should—embrace the exquisite season of cold, of white, and of shimmering possibility.
