I don't care what the pedants say, it's winter.

Those particular pedants would be wrong. The solstice is midwinter, in other words, when you break that word apart and apply advanced language skills, you find it means the middle of the freaking winter. The idea that the end of December is the start of winter is a recent fad, as far as I can tell.

Those same pedants probably tell you not to end a sentence with a preposition either, or use singular they.