There is one thing that I like about winter. No bugs. Mosquitoes spoil a lot of fun for me, so I enjoy being able to go outside without any blood loss. Other than that, winter is the pits.

I went through a lot of tough winters when I was younger. Some of it seemed like fun then, but even sleigh riding gets old after a few decades. I prefer a motor scooter and a balmy day.
If I need a snowman, I'll get one of those plastic deals at Wal-Mart. That way, I don't worry about frozen fingers, toes, and ears. I seldom get upper respiratory infections in warm weather.

As a child in Kentucky, I lived in a house heated by a hand-fired furnace. It always seemed to go out overnight, because even if it was banked the night before, it would burn out in about 5 hours.
So we often woke to frozen water pipes, frost on the inside of the windows, and all three kids fighting for a spot in front of the puny gas heater in the living room.

Snow days at school hadn't been invented yet, so I walked several blocks through the snow. No, it wasn't miles and it wasn't uphill both ways, but it was still miserable. The school heating system had only two setting; Alaska and Sahara. Because everything was heated by coal, there was black stuff everywhere, even on the snow.

In Florida, I rode a bike or walked to school all winter. I seem to remember wearing a jacket a couple of times, but I didn't need it on the way home. I don't remember any heating system at the school. We mainly regulated the temperature by opening and closing those big windows.

Snow white sand on some tropical island at 78 degrees F, is just as nice as snow white snow at 20 degrees F. Maybe just a little nicer?

People who live in tropical climates don't even use the term "wind chill factor."

We were in the low 20's this morning and I woke up to the sound of someone scraping a windshield. I prefer to wake up to the sound of the Trade Winds in the palm trees. It doesn't take much wind to keep away the mosquitoes.

The best Christmas of my life was the first winter we lived in Florida. We went to the beach. I seem to remember a small evergreen tree with lights, but mainly, I remember the beach. I have no idea what presents I got, but that beach is still firmly in my memory.

The older I get, the more I understand why so many old snowbirds pack up and move to Florida every winter. When I get that old, I'll probably join them.