In our calendar, which is based on the movement of the sun, the arrival of winter marks a major turning point. Light gains ground over darkness, coinciding with the winter solstice, and we celebrate one of the most important festivals on the calendar: Christmas. But in an eminently agricultural society like ours (despite the fact there are very few people who work on the land today, we have a tradition over thousands of years old) winter is a hard time that people try to get through as best they can, following the advice of our proverb teller, an inexhaustible source of popular wisdom.

Winter medicine: soup, bread and wine

The Catalan proverb teller doesn’t usually touch on diet but she says very clearly that soups, bread and wine are the staples of a good winter diet, as these translations show: ‘Broth and mulled wine in winter’, ‘Mature wine and warm bread makes for a good way to spend winter’, ‘The best friend in winter is a gourd of wine’, ‘Oil, salt and warm bread make for a good way to spend winter’. We need to bear in mind that, in the past, winter was a time when the mortality rate was high. ‘Winter colic and spring fever bring death in their wake’, ‘Like Feliu’s yawn, mouth open in winter and closed in summer’. And the best way of preventing ill health is to eat well and keep warm, both very important at this time: ‘With fire in winter, you’re half fed’, ‘Soup and sun in winter give comfort’, ‘He who eats bread and burns wood gives winter the shove’. Being able to slaughter a pig helps a lot, because pork provides food rich in protein for months: ‘Pig killed, winter solved’.

And if all those precautions don’t work, the proverb teller recommends not getting up early (‘In winter it’s better to it’s better to get a good tan than get up early’), sleeping on your back (‘If you want to enjoy good health, sleep a l’hivern de cara i a l’estiu d’esquena’) or looking for a woman baker to be your lover, because then you’ll always be warm and have food in the house: ‘A baker in winter, an innkeeper in summer’.

Winter, a time of poverty?

This insistence of popular wisdom on getting ready for the cold is due to our agricultural past, when winter was a period of rural inactivity: ‘If you don’t work in the summer, you go without in the winter’, ‘The piper’s wife dances in summer and yawns in winter’, ‘Anyone in winter going round in summer clothes, don’t ask them how it goes’. All that makes us think that winter is the hardest season of the year: ‘Winter is a time of dry bread and few coins in the money box’.

But for some sectors the cold weather has a good side, because it creates jobs. ‘Winter is a good time for blacksmiths, glaziers and bakers’, ‘There are fewer shoemakers in summer and more in winter’ are two good examples of this. It’s also important to know how to organise your life too: ‘Those who understand well are shepherds in winter and swineherds in summer’, because in winter the herds are shut up in the farm and not spread out over the hills, while summer is the time for fattening pigs, a very profitable business.

When will winter end?

The coldest season of the year is just beginning and we are worried about when it will end. The proverb collection has some calculations, lots of them, with the most optimistic going for Candlemas, 2 February. ‘Si la Candelera plora, l’hivern és fora’ is half a rhyme that means it’s midwinter. Pessimists, meanwhile, put the end of the cold weather between April and May: ‘When April’s finished, winter’s passed’, ‘Until the April moon has passed, don’t give winter up for finished’/ ‘Don’t say winter has finished if St George’s Day hasn’t passed’/‘By the middle of May, winter has gone away’/‘Until 12 May, winter doesn’t say: “I’m going away”’/ ‘Don’t give winter up for gone, if St Isidore’s Day has not yet come’ (15 May).

Whenever it is, the cold weather slowly starts to fade away, especially after the fearsome “week of the long beards” at the start of January: ‘Per Sant Vicenç l’hivern cada dia perd una dent’, ‘Per Sant Pau, l’hivern se’n va o s’hi ajau’. We also say ‘Atansa’t Quaresma, aparta’t hivern’ o ‘Quan el març se’n va a meditar, l’hivern s’ha d’acabar’. Another unmistakable sign that the cold weather is going is when nature shows signs it is being born again: ‘Orenetes per Santa Madrona, l’hivern és fora’ (15 March),‘Quan canta el gripau, hivern adéu-siau’.