Since it’s the shortest day of the year you would think it would be the middle of the col season, as the days get longer after.
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Because the Earth holds a lot of heat. It takes time for that heat to transfer in or out; the same way that, upon lighting a stove, the pan is still cold to touch, and after extinguishing the stove, the pan is still very hot but has just started cooling down.
The speed of heat transfer is correlated to how hot the object is. So even though the days are getting longer again, it’s not enough to actually keep the planet warm; the planet is “too hot” and therefore transferring heat away (to space) too fast for the small amount of sunlight (even though it’s slowly increasing) to make up for it. By the spring equinox (~March 21st), there’s enough sunlight on the hemisphere to steadily warm it up, which leads to spring and summer.
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