"Hey, if I had to live with all that reduced sunlight and snow cover, I'd stay depressed, too!"
Seasonal Affective Disorder, SAD, in a place where the season lasts about 8 months, would, indeed, be hard to take. No freaking wonder the Vikings and such kept sailing to points south! Thank Heaven for halogen lamps!
We live in MA, and one year, our furnace for the downstairs went out in mid-January. We have a separate one for the bedrooms, upstairs, so that was good. It was a couple of weeks before the guy could get the part to fix it, so we relied heavily on our fireplace and I also baked a lot to help keep the heat up downstairs! We also kept the lights going a lot, and SirKit mentioned that was the most cheerful he'd ever felt during the winter since we'd moved here! LOL!
The dreariness is one of the main reasons we're looking forward to moving back to MS before this coming winter!!