POMprompt #7 Bring on the Nostalgic Winter

a POMprompt poetry theme

Nostalgic Winter

Winter is arriving here in the US. The nights are getting colder and longer and I am growing anxious for snow (although where I am that may not be for another month). Some parts of the US are already experiencing snow storms which pass by on my TV during the news broadcast.

I have not always been a fan of the winter as I hate the cold, but as I get older I am more energized with the changing of seasons, of weather, of seasonal input. The onset of Christmas commercials and Christmas music and the movies…it’s all new and different somehow, year after year.

When I was a kid there were huge snows here several times each winter. My dad took all five of us kids out to play in the snow until parts of our body were so numb we had to come in and thaw ourselves out. My mother made snow cream. In that day, pollution was far from our minds and we had no issue with eating sweetened snow. We built snowmen and buried ourselves in piles of snow. We took off our soggy clothes and Mom had something hot for us to drink.

My father did a lot of deer hunting in the fall and winter months. I sat at his feet and listened to the “deer stories” he told of his adventures in the woods. I came from a family of storytellers, which I now understand is quite rare.

As this winter season approaches I find myself thinking of those childhood moments and of the nostalgic Christmas and winter symbols in my life. I find myself appreciating them a little more than before. Perhaps it is aging. Perhaps I am simply more comfortable with who I am and how I got to this place in my life than I have been before, and I am able to let the world slide through its seasons without worrying so much.

I invite you to contemplate this time of year. What makes it “special” in some way. It’s ok if you have to go way back to find these thoughts, to nights of laying in your bed thinking of Santa. Or if you have to make it up based on the movies that carried you through that awful wintertime divorce. Or if a certain memory of Christmas plays in your head like a beautiful song, I’d like to hear about it.

Tell me about your nostalgic winter or your nostalgic Christmas in a poem or series of poems. Make me see those mittens, feel the cold on your nose, or feel like I am in that moment with you, by that fire, hearing your story. Nostalgia doesn’t have to be overwhelmingly happy — but at least an “it takes me back” moment that you’d like to revisit by telling the story, even if the events around what you share weren’t perfect.

(If it is NOT winter where you are — your nostalgic Christmas tale might be a bit sunny and look different from the pics below — still, share! I’d like to see how your nostalgic December differs from mine :)

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Christina Ward 💗 is a poet and POMadmin.