Put On a Hat, Please

Updated at 12:43 p.m. ET on Jan. 5, 2021.

At last, the days are getting longer in the Northern Hemisphere, a change that feels particularly welcome now, given, well, everything. But winter is just getting started. In any other year, we’d be firmly in a season of cozy indoor gatherings. This year, however, requires that we avoid anything of the sort, especially as America’s coronavirus epidemic continues to worsen and a new and worrying mutation of the virus has emerged.

January and February are almost always difficult months, weather-wise. The days of passing balmy evenings in the park feel like a distant memory. But the safest way to spend time with others this winter is the same way that’s been safest since the pandemic started: Spend it outside. If you are able to, it’s time to embrace the cold.

This might sound like the kind of advice you’d hear from a cold-weather obsessive, but I am not that. I do not ski.. I’m just a kindly winter evangelist, standing in front of your outdoor restaurant table, asking you to put on a hat.