This is an interesting one. There is a specific myth associated with the turning of the seasons. There are a few variations of it, but the traditional interpretation is as follows.

Demeter was the Olympian goddess of agriculture, the harvest and the cycle of life and death. She had a daughter named Persephone, who was the goddess of Nature and vegetation. Several of the other Olympian gods, such as Ares and Apollo, had attempted to woo Persephone but Demeter had rebuffed their offers and kept her daughter separate from the covetous Olympians. Hades, the god of the underworld, was one who had fallen in love with Persephone but he knew that if Demeter was refusing the suits of the gods on Olympus, there was no way she would allow Persephone to join Hades in the underworld.

One day Persephone was gathering flowers with Artemis and Athena when a great cleft erupted in the earth. From it sprang Hades, who abducted Persephone and stole her away down to the underworld. For this, it is said, Hades had gained the permission of his brother Zeus, Persephone’s father.

Demeter, unsurprisingly, is distraught to hear of her precious daughter’s disappearance. From here there are two versions of the myth. According to the first, while Demeter is desperately searching for Persephone, she neglects the earth. Lost in her grief, the living things stop growing and then begin to die.

In the other version, Demeter in her fury refuses to allow things to grown until her daughter is returned to her. All across the world, the seasons are halted and crops rapidly die off, causing people to suffer and starve. The suffering and despair of their followers causes the other Olympians to complain to Zeus.

Eventually, Demeter turns to the sun god Helios, who sees all that happens across the world. He informs her of the circumstances of Persephone’s disappearance.

Faced with the extinction of all life, Zeus finally relents and dispatches Hermes to the underworld to tell Hades to release Persephone. Hades agrees to release her only if Persephone has not eaten anything from the underworld. In some versions he had tricked her into eating some pomegranate seeds. In other versions she ate the seeds willingly. In any case, because she ate fruit of the underworld, Persephone was bound to it and forced to return to Hades for a third of each year.

When Demeter was reunited with her daughter, the living things flourished once again. But every year Persephone was required to descend to the underworld to be with Hades and every year Demeter becomes lost in her grief and living things stop growing once again. This is winter.

Demeter’s grief is only lifted when her daughter returns, heralding new life. This is spring.