Wintersleep's emotional ties

I was up thinking at 1:00 last night. I was trying to sleep, and feeling really beaten in. The weather is really knocking me down. I usually feel tired at 12:00 PM, but lately I've been getting drowsy at 8:00 PM.
I started really wondering about why we (or at least I) get sentimental and lonely during the winter. My friend told me that in the fall we "change from exterior, yang, and sun, to interior, yin, and earth." That makes sense, but it is well neigh impossible to convince my mind to drop things when it's in it's manic butt-crack-'o-dawn-quick-think-of-something-to-keep-Rahel-up state. So it kept banging itself against the doors to my inner secrets, hoping that it would find some answers to lap up from it's bruises, when something came to me.

I thought that maybe the reason we feel sentimental in the winter is to remind ourselves of our earthly ties. To remind us why we have to wake up from the long winter and carry out our lives. I wondered what would happen if someone went into wintersleep without harboring love of the outside world within themselves. Would they die? Does this love act as some kind of way to sustain our souls in sleep? As a lifeforce even? Or maybe, if we forgot our love, we wouldn't have a reason to wake.

I suppose that, anyway, it's important to constantly remind ourselves why we live. A world without winter would be a forgetful place indeed.