The Wit’s Guide to Winter

Or, complaining porcupines

Les Éboulements, or Better Sled than Dead, by A.Y. Jackson, 1923.

“Where would the Irish be,” asked the novelist Elizabeth Bowen, “without someone to be Irish at?” And that logic explains why winter is the season of the wit. Not despite its drafts, numbness, shivering, slipperiness, salt stains, and frostbite but because of them. Winter offers plenty to be witty about and forces humans into close quarters so we have someone to be witty at.

“The hardest thing any man can do is fall down on the ice when it’s slippery and get up and praise the lord.”
— Josh Billings

The philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer used porcupines in the winter as a metaphor for the difficulties of human relationships. The prickly rodents huddle together to share warmth, but when they get too close they injure each other with their quills. And so we have “the need for society which springs from the emptiness and monotony of men’s lives” in constant tension with our “many unpleasant and repulsive qualities and insufferable drawbacks.” It makes you want to go live in a cave, provided there’s someone in the cave to listen to your complaints about everyone else.

“Buy thermometers in the wintertime. They’re much lower then.”
— Soupy Sales

There are good things about winter! Like apricity, a word that describes the warmth of the sun at this time of year. We don’t need a specific term for the warmth of the sun in any other season because we take it for granted. I learned this word from the clever novel The Liar’s Dictionary by Eley Williams, in which a character mixes it up with apricide, which means the slaughter of boars. No boars, mosquitoes, or ticks in winter, either!

“There’s a certain slant of light
On winter afternoons
That oppresses like the weight
Of cathedral tunes.”
— Emily Dickinson

My country’s not a country, it’s the winter, sang Gilles Vigneault. The 95-year-old chansonnier is a committed Quebec sovereigntist, which is why he sang those words in French and why it’s grand of him to share his country with the rest of us for what, six months of the year? Or more:

“Read a criticism of Canadians which says that we are great brooders, and attributes this in part to the fact that our winter lasts for seven months. This is nonsense; our winter lasts for nine months, in a lucky year.”
— Samuel Marchbanks

We have winter to thank for the Complaint Choir, a Finnish innovation in which people are brought together to sing their grievances. The husband-and-wife artists Oliver Kochta-Kalleinen and Tellervo Kalleinen had the idea on a wintry walk through Helsinki, alighting on a literal translation of the word valituskuoro, a chorus of lamentations, as “the possibility of transforming the huge energy people put into complaining into something else.” 

These are Schopenhauer’s porcupines set to music, forced together in unpleasant circumstances with the entirely pleasant outcome of having a common enemy to blame. It’s cold, it’s dark, it’s something to talk about. And it’s only just begun!

“Many are cold but few are frozen.”
— Frank Muir

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This week’s recco: The book of the year

The best book is a book of other books. Not to be confused with The Book of Books! And my wonderful paid subscribers (only $C30 for a year of reccos!) can find out why below:

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This month’s Riposte Cardist: Ani Castillo

This month’s Riposte Card — an original work of art sent each month to those wonderful readers who send along C$80 per year — is by

Ani Castillo

, a brilliant Mexican-Canadian cartoonist who introduces herself as follows:

Is there one joke, witticism, or aphorism you live by?

I love the Mexican saying “Lo bailado quien te lo quita.” Which translates roughly to “no one can take away what you’ve already danced.” It means that even if an adventure goes sideways, even if you get in trouble, even if things don’t turn out like you imagined they would, or even if things come to an end before you wanted them to, EVEN THEN, you got to dance, baby. And no one can take that away from you. ❤️

What work are you most proud of, and how can people support it?

Oh, man. That would have to be my books!!! Especially the one coming out in January: PEOPLE ARE MY FAVORITE PLACES. It's about the lesson I learned in the pandemic: That people, and love, are what matter the most to me. And to support it, you could preorder the book and write me a nice review! Those things are so powerful. When you leave a nice review to an author you love, you’re actually giving them a huge gift, because that helps other people find them. And then the love grows! ❤️

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Quote Vote

“Some rainy winter Sundays when there’s a little boredom, you should always carry a gun. Not to shoot yourself, but to know exactly that you’re always making a choice.”
— Lina Wertmuller

Here’s a less ominous choice: What should next week’s newsletter be about?

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That was Issue 234 of Get Wit Quick, your seasoned series of seasonal sayings. We handled Summer and Fall before, so we gotta keep at it till Spring. If you’re looking to curl up with a good book,  Elements of Wit: Mastering The Art of Being Interesting is highly curlable. Warm up the ❤️ below with a gentle tap.