Ever since I moved to the Southern Hemisphere, I found that I've had no intuitive sense of the time of year. I knew intellectually that it was Christmas a couple months after I arrived - and participated in all the celebrations with my kiwi parents - but it didn't feel like Christmas. My version of Christmas has always been cold, snowy and dark. But my Kiwi Christmas involved being barefoot on the beach, lingering over the evening meal in the sunshine and wearing a sleeveless dress. Nearly two years later, my body still doesn't compute how July is the dead of winter and spring is now, in September.
With increasing urbanisation and how disconnected our lives are from the earth, I wonder if this is one way that humans will always be in touch with the environment. As we're untethered from the land, these are important markers that help us feel annual cycles. To know in your gut that January is either freezing cold or blazing hot roots us in our place and in time. You can't help it and maybe that's a good thing.