Current challenge - Winter   Challenge Facts Seasonal Theme: Winter Starting Date: January 1st Deadline for Joining-up: January 17th Deadline for Stories: February 22nd Want to play? Read the rules and FAQ. "A sad tale's best for winter. I have one of sprites and goblins." -- William Shakespeare "I prefer winter and fall, when you feel the bone structure in the landscape - the loneliness of it - the dead feeling of winter. Something waits beneath it - the whole story doesn't show." - Andrew Wyeth Winter - cold and stark, long nights and short days, a time to hibernate and reserve strength, waiting for the new growth of spring. This is a time of fallow fields, graveyards, darkness and death, and yet also, thanks to midwinter festivals, a time of family, warmth and celebration. Winter corresponds to the time of the dark moon, when the earth blocks the moon from the sun and it reflects no light upon us. In the ages of man, it is oldest age and death; it is the nadir of the cycle of life. This does not make it necessarily an evil season however. Without sleep, we would all go mad, and there are few places so warm and welcoming as our own bed at the end of a long day. And while winter is a season of bleak imagery, it is at the time of greatest darkness that we are illuminated by the winter festival -- Saturnalia, Yule, Christmas, Solstice... whatever name it is given, it originates in a desire for the return of the sun. It is a beacon in the darkness showing the way forward. The festival is also the time of reversals. The sun reverses its course (subjectively speaking) and begins to return to us, and traditions such as the Lord of Misrule and the British Boxing Day reverse the normal hierarchies of society, allowing the servant to become the served. Perhaps because of the festivals, there is frequently something a little bit magical about winter in art and literature. Traditionally, it is a time of snow and ice, when the land slumbers under a frost hardened blanket and the world can seem a changed place, alien and fantastical. Sound is muted after a heavy snowfall and everything is bright and white -- a blank slate of boundless possibility. Snow itself is often used as a symbol of the miraculous. Winter is also the time of introspection and dreaming, as the land sleeps, as do the hibernating animals, so does a part of us, building and conserving strength. New Year's Eve in particular is a time of review. The British New Year's Honours list is announced, awarding people who are considered to have done well in their chosen spheres with knighthoods and OBEs. Newspapers and television channels look back over the last twelve months, retrospectively considering events, and we as individuals are prone to ask, 'another year over, and what have we done?' Or perhaps, like Scrooge, we feel compelled to look further back and consider the worth and achievements of our entire life. After reviewing the old, we look forward to the new, making our resolutions and promises to do better. The New Year starts, the new diary cracks open to a clean page, and off we go. The colours of winter are black, white and grey -- bare bones colours. The rich hues are bleached from the world's palette, leaving a stark clarity where truths can no longer be denied and we cannot be distracted from essential nature of things. Trees are spindly skeletons of themselves, black fingers silhouetted against the chill winter sky, and the farmers fields are, if not blanketed in white, deep rutted expanses of dark, bare earth. In the past, there was a real danger in winter. Wolves and starving brigands, as well as inhospitable weather, would force people to lock themselves in together for security and warmth, giving them at once that sense of family and a likely case of cabin fever, needing to get out and away. Winter is very much the season for the gothic genre, and as such can easily be connected with Angel (the series). Angel's dead, unbeating heart is reminiscent of the fallow fields with the hope of spring/shanshu faint in the future. Episodes that seem to have a winter theme would perhaps include Tomorrow, Parting Gifts, Reprise, Peace Out, The Price and Birthday. "Every mile is two in winter." -- George Herbert *** Looking for more inspiration on the theme of Winter? We have compiled lists of a wide variety of resources for you. *The Winter Links list* *** "Winter is the time for comfort - it is the time for home." - Edith Sitwell "We must endure our thoughts all night, until the bright obvious stands motionless in the cold." - Wallace Stevens   FAQ * Rules * Story archives * Contact us * Home