Why are the Yomim Tovim connected to the seasons of the year? What can we learn from the fact that Pesach must fall out in the springtime?
The year is split into two primary seasons: winter and summer. Winter is a time when the nights are long, it is cold outside and cloudy, the fields and trees are bare and empty. Summer is a time when it is nice and bright outside, the days are long, the fruits grow nicely, and so on.
In avodas Hashem, the winter represents a time when our avodah is more related to receiving than to doing. Obviously a Yid must always do, act, and accomplish, but in the winter there is more focus on inner work and an internal clinging to Hashem through the dark and cold season. The main avodah is bittul, to know with utmost clarity that Hashem does everything!
The summer is bright and joyful, and the fields are full of Hashem’s shefa. It is a time of action!
But there is a danger in a mindset of action, because we become more likely to forget that Hashem is the one in charge; that He and only He is the one who gives us everything we have!
To help us be focused on the real truth, Hashem gave us the Yomim Tovim, where we can remind ourselves that Hashem is in charge of everything, and He is everything! Right before we begin the summer, we have Pesach for this reason. We remind ourselves of Yetzias Mitzrayim, where we saw Hashem’s hashgacha pratis! This infuses us with emunah to help us prepare for the summer, when we’d otherwise be at a higher risk of forgetting that.
We then end off the summer with Sukkos, where we can again infuse ourselves with this emunah in case we slipped during the summer when our focus was on action.
In the winter, when the avodah is to cling to Hashem, there is less of a danger of forgetting about Hashem. This is why there are no Yomim Tovim in the Torah in the winter.
There is a danger in a mindset of action, because we become more to forget that Hashem is the one in charge.
But when one is in a state of bittul, there comes a rish of yiush.
After the destruction of the first Beis Hamikdash, our sages saw that there was a new danger in the winter: the danger of yiush [despair]. When one is fully in a sense of bittul, he can fall into a slumber of yiush.
This is why Chazal came and made us two more Yomim Tovim, Purim and Chanukah, to wake us up from this desperation, and get us warmed up for some more geshmake bittul!
Even though this is a yearly cycle, and one may feel, well, I filled up with emunah last year, why do it again? This is false! Every year is new. Just like when one learns gemara and then does chazara, technically, he is learning the same thing over again, but it is very different from the last time. Every year we make chazara on this cycle and get filled up with a brand new depth of emunah that we’ve never had before!
The Bottom Line
There is a real connection between a Yom Tov and the season it falls out in. Hashem orchestrated that we have a Yom Tov that will fill us up with exactly the boost we need based on our natural tendencies at various times of the year!
This article was found in Nekuda Tova Issue 74.