April 18, 2024

By JAZLYN SLACK

Sunsets are beautiful. The pink, orange and purple colours light up the sky as the sun falls behind the horizon. It’s one of the most romantic scenes that you can imagine, however, I would rather sit after dinner and watch the sunset then before.

Because of daylight time, the clocks turn back an hour in November. Some people would argue that you get that extra hour of sleep, but that also means winter is coming, which also means it is dark by 6 p.m., colder and each day is gloomier than the last.

The winter season drags on and on until March. For four long months, we wake up, go to school and come home just in time to watch the sun set.

According to an article in the Huffington Post on healthy living and sleep, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) typically starts in late autumn and continues through winter. It includes an increased appetite, increased daytime sleepiness and decreased energy in the afternoon, loss of interest in work, unhappiness and lethargy.

All of these symptoms are in relation to the time change and the winter season. If daylight time didn’t occur, the sun would be out longer, thus reversing all the symptoms stated above and possibly making winter a little more tolerable.

But forget the weariness, the lack of sunlight and drawn out days, and remember your hats, coats, mittens, boots and warm fuzzy socks because these days, you’ll freeze if you don’t acquire not one but all of these necessities for winter.

A decent winter coat is a good chunk of money, and trying to find reasonably priced boots that actually keep your feet dry while trudging through the snow is almost like trying to find water in the desert.

Unless you want to look like a lumberjack and strut your stuff in those big work boots, then you can look forward to having wet feet for the next four months.

 Mittens are a must, and winter hats may keep your head warm, but what happens when you get to school and you pull your hat off? Behold the glory of hat hair. Your hair sticks to your face thanks to static electricity. It sticks up in any and all directions, and no matter how hard you try, it never does what you want it to. You are then required to put your hat back on covering the mess and sweating until you step back out and confront the cold.

Winter is fun, don’t get me wrong. Christmas is during winter, and you can make snowmen and snow angels, have snowball fights and roll the town’s largest snowball. But none of this is possible unless every snowfall brings packing snow which makes sculpting possible.

You can’t do anything with wet snow that quickly turns into slush, and you can’t do anything with the fluffy, yet pretty, stuff.

Unfortunately, we don’t have a choice in which type we get.

Winter is one season that is almost impossible to get through.

If hibernating was an option, I’m sure it would be strongly considered by a lot of people.

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