Why Winter Rituals Matter (and what they do to your nervous system)

I was doing some boring website analysis last week - tracking where people find me, which Pinterest pins are getting clicked - when I noticed something odd.

One pin was getting thousands more saves and clicks than anything else. The image was nice enough - an atmospheric autumn scene - but nothing special compared to the others. Yet people kept clicking.

Then I saw it: when you’re scrolling past, only three words of the description are visible.

Women. Midlife. Ritual.

That’s what people were reaching for. The word ritual.

The hot chocolate ritual

This made me think of something from my childhood. When I was seven or eight, I’d go to a friend’s house after school for an hour before my parents picked me up. There’d be five or six of us kids, and we all had jobs.

While the mum heated milk for hot chocolate, my job (with another child) was to close all the curtains in the house. It was a big old house with tall windows - proper linings, the works. Once we’d finished, we’d come down to the kitchen for hot chocolate and biscuits, then start our homework.

Not very much, is it? Just a sensible chore. A way to dispatch kids while making drinks.

But I still remember it almost 50 years later.

What Elizabeth knew

That woman - Elizabeth Chalmers Watson - understood something about everyday rituals. She was creating a threshold: school from home, daytime from nighttime, outside from inside, anxiety from safety.

School was unpredictable and busy and often stressful. This ritual was the antidote.

And I think that’s why thousands of people are clicking on pins about midlife rituals right now.

When everything feels unpredictable

Life is horribly unpredictable at the moment. Climate change, wars, politics, finances - things we know about but feel powerless to change. We can’t predict what’s happening day to day, sometimes minute to minute.

And here’s the thing: our brains are prediction machines.

They look for patterns. They use those patterns to predict what happens next. When life becomes unpredictable, our brains get exhausted trying to find patterns that aren’t there. This is what stress and anxiety and burnout actually are - your brain working overtime because nothing is behaving the way it’s supposed to.

The antidote

Rituals - rhythms, seasonal patterns, predictable repeated actions - are the antidote.

They’re things your brain can predict. Things you’re in control of. Patterns your brain can recognize and go: “Ah yes, I know what happens next. I can relax here.”

Your nervous system doesn’t need to be on high alert. It can settle.

My winter rhythms (not prescriptions)

I’m not going to prescribe rituals for you - other people’s patterns rarely work. But here’s what I do:

Morning: Every single day starts the same. Cup of tea, watching the birds, a bit of knitting. My brain knows that for the next half hour, nothing novel is happening. We’re just settling in.

Dusk: Soon as it starts getting dark (which is appallingly early in Scotland in winter), I close the curtains and draw the blinds. It’s a nod to my childhood. A feeling of drawing in, creating separation between outside chaos and inside safety.

Evenings: At weekends in the living room, I light candles. That’s the signal: this is evening time, domestic time, predictable relaxed time.

Small things. Inconsequential, really. But they create pockets of predictability when everything else feels uncertain.

What I’m suggesting

You probably already have these rhythms in your life. Small repeated actions you do with a bit of ceremony. Things that feel easy, that you want to do - like stroking a cat the right way.

Find them. Notice them. Lean into them.

Let your brain know: this bit is predictable, this bit you control, here you can settle.

When the world outside is chaotic, these small spheres of predictability aren’t indulgent. They’re how we create resilience. They’re how we keep ourselves company through the dark.

What are your winter rhythms? What small repeated actions are already anchoring you? I’d love to know in the comments.

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