The Warmth of Winter Screensavers

I love winter. Yes, it may be a time when the sun disappears and a walk to the office can be piercingly, shockingly cold, when the nights feel longer and the days, less bright. But if there’s a season that can transform ice-covered sidewalks into a catwalk and allow me to slip on the orange cashmere sweater that’s been stashed inside my closet for months, then it’s a season that cannot be hated. So I get excited the day the first flakes of snow fall. Instead of dreading winter, I celebrate it. I stack up on hot cocoa, polish my skating shoes, clean the apartment fireplace into perfect squeakiness, and –of course– admire new winter screensavers that have been downloaded for my new snow-white MacBook Air.

So yeah, I’ve got myself and my notebook – literally and metaphorically – covered. It’s a good thing that the Spyware and Adware Free downloads from Blue Mountain and American Greetings are compatible with my Macintosh system. I got myself three screensavers for the winter season, all of which I’ll examine more closely below.

The first is called Winter Beauty. The screensaver features a tranquil digital animation of snow gently, delicately falling with the darkness on a hill where a cute little cottage stands. A thin plume of smoke emerges from the cottage’s chimney to add a nice, relaxing touch. As the sun rises, the cottage glows with the warmth and the brightness of a random spring morning – until such time when the moon and the snowy starlight illuminate the landscape again. While I wish there could have been some background melody to accompany this winter screensaver, I already like it as it is. (Besides, it matches perfectly the color scheme of my desktop.)

The Ice-skating Penguin screensaver is utterly adorable – reminiscent of two of my favorite animated films ever, Happy Feet and Ice Age. The animation shows a graceful penguin skating on ice to cut a hole for a seal who was stuck under the rink. This screensaver had me the moment the surface opens up for the seal’s head to pop out, wearing a red skullcap, looking round him for a blessing to thank. “Season’s Greetings,” says a caption at the end of the cartoon, giving this screensaver a distinctly holiday theme.

The winter screensaver I have chosen to use for now, however, is the simplest of the three. It’s called A Cozy Fire: a 3D virtual (but realistic-looking) fire roaring from a hearth as inviting as hearths could ever get: meticulously finished wooden mantel; a grand, classic fire surround; granite tiles out of the Victorian era. (In other words, a hearth that only my dreams could afford.) A Cozy Fire is a warm and relaxing screensaver to watch on a cold December evening, while I am sipping from a hot cup of Swiss Miss and mulling the body copy options for my new advertising account. It also captures the mood with which I have always associated winter. Snug, romantic, the perfect occasion to appreciate any kind of warmth that life may bring.