- Winter is usually personified as an old man in furs, the impish Jack Frost, a cruel and withered hag, or a Winter Royal Lady. This is the likeliest season to appear alone and to take an antagonistic role, due to winter being perceived as a much more aggressive and present force than the milder seasons.
- Spring is typically a young and lively girl, sometimes with Fertile Feet or flowers in her hair to symbolize her bringing fertility and life back to the world. If she's somehow indisposed, spring itself may tarry. Spring and Winter sometimes appear as a contrasting duo without the other two.
- Summer is often a more "mature" or "adult" version of Spring, and may replace or be equated with Spring in Winter/Growing Season pairs. Her (it's also usually a her) main associations will be summer plants like poppies, wheat, and summer fruit like citrus and berries. In some cases, Summer might be associated with tropical themes, such as wearing beach or tropical clothing or carrying exotic fruits.
- Autumn tends to have the least recurring appearances and nature, although it may carry baskets of autumn fruit like apples, pears, and chestnuts, or sheaves of corn from the harvest season. It usually only appears as part of a quartet with the others. Similarly to Spring and Summer, Autumn and Winter are likely to be treated as a singular thing, with the more extreme part of the cold season keeping the name.
Additionally, a setting might instead have personifications of other seasonal systems, such as the wet and dry seasons of tropical regions or a fantasy world's Bizarre Seasons.
The seasons may give way to each other in a polite and orderly procession, or they may fight and scheme each year for control of nature.
If they have permanent homes, as opposed to wandering the world or going wherever abstract concepts go when they're not in use, these may be places of permanent seasonal extremes. Winter may live in an Ice Palace somewhere locked in Endless Winter, Autumn in a Forest of Perpetual Autumn, and so on.
Subtrope of Anthropomorphic Personification and Nature Spirit. If these four answer to anyone in particular, this may be Mother Nature. In turn, the Holiday Personifications, the embodiments of the months, and assorted seasonal and weather spirits may be organized under the seasons in which they occur. Painting the Frost on Windows may also be involved; examples where large numbers of fairies, imps, or whatever else change the seasons more properly go there. This crosses over into Elemental Embodiment and Four-Element Ensemble sometimes, although the precise elements tend to fluctuate outside of Summer and Fire (and Winter and Ice, when that is treated as an element).
If Four-Temperament Ensemble is in play, the blossoming spunkiness of Spring would be Sanguine, Summer's aggressive energy would be Choleric, the moodiness and contemplative atmosphere of Autumn would be Melancholic, and Winter's chill and grimness would be Phlegmatic.
See also Seasonal Baggage for the various clothing accents, accessories, and props associated with these figures.
Examples:
- Flying Witch: When the seasons change, the harbinger of each season comes to visit Makoto and takes the steps necessary to change the season. Two have been shown so far:
- The harbinger of spring is a man with an owl mask, who is a kind soul who leaves flowers for Chinatsu after accidentally scaring her.
- The harbinger of summer starts off looking like a handsome blond man but eventually reveals his true form as a jackal-like being. He's still a nice guy, although he does have to fix an issue where it's snowing in a park in July because a plant that causes winter was left behind.
- Hetalia: Axis Powers: General Winter is a spirit representing the Russian winter, based on Old Man Winter from Russian folk tales. He is characterized by his constant torment of Russia, but remains his greatest ally during wartime.
- Allegory of the Four Seasons, by Bartolomeo Manfredi: Each of the four characters in the piece represents the four seasons. The figures kissing to the left are Spring and Autumn, with Spring being the one in the floral crown and playing the lute, while Autumn wears a grape-leaf wreath; the woman facing the viewer with sprigs of wheat in her hair is Summer; and the old man in furs is Winter.
- Alphonse Mucha, a Czech artist, did three sets titled The Seasons or The Four Seasons in 1896, 1897, and 1900, depicting the seasons as young women.
- Spring is depicted surrounded by blossoming cherry branches in the first two sets, while in the third, she wears green and holds a bouquet of mixed flowers while standing among snowy branches.
- Summer is associated with summer flowers. She wears a garland of poppies in the first set, reclines among sunflowers in the second, and stands in a field of wheat and poppies in the third.
- Autumn is shown standing among red leaves and is associated with late harvests — the first set shows her looking at a ripe vine, the second holding a harvest of apples and pears, and with a basket of fruit in the third.
- Winter is shown completely cloaked and hooded save for her face, in green-blue in the first set and white in the last two. She is shown standing huddled into herself among snowy, wintry woodland.
- Giuseppe Arcimboldo, an Italian artist, did a set of four paintings titled The Seasons. Each is a collection of plants from the titular season, arranged in a profile portrait of a human.
- Spring is a woman primarily made up of flowers, and her clothes are various vegetation.
- Summer is a woman whose face is composed of fruits and vegetables, while she is clothed in straw.
- Autumn is a man whose face is made up of later-growing fruits and vegetables, as well as mushrooms and chestnuts (more autumnal fare). His clothes are wooden slats, alluding to crop harvesting and storage.
- Winter is a man whose face is a gnarled and wrinkly trunk with some leaves. The only "crop" on his body is citrus, a winter fruit.
- The Clock Which Struck Thirteen by Richard Blythe: A mouse is taught to tell the time by Father Time himself, then the seasons appear in their personified forms, accompanied by people representing their months. Winter is an old man dressed in furs, Spring is a pretty young woman and the daughter of Summer, a beautiful lady in a golden cloak, and Autumn is a scruffy young man (the son of Summer and Winter) who can only think of the bad weather which autumn brings, and he treats his months badly. The mouse thinks he is unfair to them, and that autumn is a lovely season of the year.
- Archies Weird Mysteries: #11: "Fear of Frost": Jack Frost, a frosty-skinned imp in blue tights, convinces his relative, Wind Jill, to help him make a colder winter since he feels that humans take his frost for granted. He quickly goes mad with power and threatens to plunge the world into an ice age, and the characters need to seek out the other seasonal elementals to rein him in. First they seek his flame-haired cousin Spring Thaw, who has to be fetched from where she's spending her off-season vacationing on the Sun; when even she's not able to overcome Jack, they turn instead to his boss, Old Man Winter.
- Asterix and the Class Act: In "Springtime in Gaul", Asterix and Obelix are traveling through the woods during a blizzard, complaining about how Spring Is Late, when they find Spring — a small, bearded imp — unconscious in the woods, having been ambushed by his rival Winter, who looks much the same but with purple skin, when he had come to fight him to turn the seasons. They give him some magic potion to help even the odds, and Spring goes back to spreading growth and warmth over the world.
- Fables: Lumi, the Snow Queen herself, is the embodiment of winter, and she has three other sisters for the other seasons. When her powers were stolen by Jack to become Jack Frost, the other sisters had to convince him to restore Lumi in exchange for him borrowing them from time to time.
- Hoppy the Marvel Bunny: In #1 "The Seasons of the Year", the Seasons live on a distant planet together with their children (the months of the year), and all look like humans except for Autumn and his sons whose heads resemble tree leaves. In the story, the Earth's weather is getting crazy because Winter is harassing the other Seasons.
- W.I.T.C.H.: The four queens of the seasons ruled their respective realm in the universe as well as embodying the elements utilized by the Guardians. Out of the four, the spring embodiment, Meter, fell from grace and transformed into a malevolent entity called the Dark Mother. It took her three sisters to seal her away to keep her from corrupting all of nature.
- Rise of the Brave Tangled Dragons: Some AUs build on Jack's Snow Day powers by dubbing him the Guardian of Winter and assigning the other three seasons to the other three heroes, sometimes after untimely deaths of their own.
- Spring: Rapunzel is consistently in charge of Spring, due to her being a Friend to All Living Things who wears Flowers of Nature, as well as her Fountain of Youth magical hair.
- Autumn: Usually Hiccup, as he's the more serious and reflective character.
- Summer: Usually Merida, thanks to her hot-tempered and wild personality.
- Rapunzel occasionally headlines as summer, which is when she was born, while Hiccup and Merida can swap depending on the fan creating the particular AU.
- The Twelve Months: When the girl is sent into the forest by her cruel stepmother in an impossible search for snowdrops in the dead of winter, she stumbles across the twelve brother Months sitting around a fire. They begin with the spring months, youthful boys in light clothing, gradually aging through the middle-aged August and autumn months until December and January are old, long-bearded men in furs and restarting the cycle with young February. Taking pity on her, the Months agree to let April have a brief reign out of turn in order to let the girl harvest the flowers.
- The Snow Queen (2002): The various women that Gerda meets over the story become the Snow Queen's sisters, each representing a season. The witch who makes Gerda think that she's her daughter represents Spring (notably in the book, she was called the Summer Witch). The princess now represents Summer, and the robbers' leader is Autumn. The Snow Queen naturally takes Winter.
- Discworld: Wintersmith: The yearly cycle between the growing and inert seasons is represented by a dance between the Wintersmith and the Summer Lady, each giving over the year to the other in turn. If something happens out of tune — say, a young witch impulsively entering the dance and entrancing the Wintersmith — bad things begin to happen.
- The Dresden Files: The Seelie and Unseelie Courts are ruled by Titania, the Queen of Summer, and Mab, the Queen of Winter, whose powers wax and wane with the cycle of the seasons. In Ghost Story, there's still snow on the ground in May because Mab has been forced to remain near Chicago to keep Harry's soulless body alive, and it's clearly causing her great strain to stick around this late in the year.
- Holiday Heroes:
- Jillian Cryones, a.k.a. Jill Freeze, was chosen to be the new embodiment/personification of winter by magical higher powers. Her main outfit is a white sweater emblazoned with a blue snowflake symbol and snow boots. Power-wise, she's An Ice Person with Casting a Shadow, Lunacy, and Soul Power abilities.
- Hazel Gutierrez, a.k.a. Cool Wind, was chosen to be the new embodiment/personification of autumn/fall by magical higher powers. Her primary outfit is an orange dress emblazoned with red and yellow leaves. Power-wise, she has Blow You Away, Casting a Shadow, and Soul Power abilities.
- The Song of Hiawatha: The penultimate canto begins with a conversation between an old man and a young man who describe what happens when they arrive somewhere (the old man makes foliage wither while the young man makes it grow, etc.); it soon becomes clear that they're the personifications of winter and spring. As they speak, the old man shrinks and eventually disappears.
- "Spring", a poem by Fyodor Tyutchev, describes the fight between the Wicked Witch Winter and the Cheerful Child Spring. Winter attempts to have the last laugh by throwing snow at Spring even as she flees, but Spring only washes her face with it and gets a better complexion.
- World of the Five Gods: The Father of Winter, the Daughter of Spring, the Mother of Summer, the Son of Autumn — and the Bastard, an Odd Jobs God of "all things out of season". Characters occasionally comment about the significance of it being a given god's season, and the major holidays occur at the change of seasons and in the middle of each season.
- Club Dorothée: In the 1991 Christmas Special "Le cadeau de Noël" (the Christmas gift), Dorothée met many celebrities and fictional characters, including singer Henri Salvador in a full white costume, with whom she sings "Vive le vent" (Jingle bells) before asking his name. He answers that he is M. Hiver (Mr.Winter), a kind of Jack Frost equivalent, that does not exist in French mythology.
- Sechs Auf Einen Streich: "Das Märchen von dem zwölf Monaten" is based on European folk tales of the twelve months (but unrelated to Marshak's play and its adaptations). In it, February grows embittered that his month is so short and conspires with the evil Frost Prince to destroy the calendar completely, poison its keeper Queen Klara, and instill Endless Winter, while the rest of the months and two human characters fight to prevent the chaos.
- "Winter" by Eduard Khil is a song about the Anthropomorphic Personification of winter who pickles snowballs, forges ice over the rivers, and sews coats of snow for the trees.
- Classical Mythology:
- The Horae group of minor deities is occasionally portrayed as personifying the seasons and representing the passage of time. The exact makeup varies, as does their parentage and position on Olympus.
- The Fabulae, written by Gaius Julius Hyginus in the 1st century, names three daughters of Zeus and Themis: Thallo (Spring, associated with new growth and youth), Auxo (Summer, a fertility goddess and protector of vegetation), and Carpo (Autumn, goddess of ripening and harvesting).
- The Dionysiaca, written by Nonnus of Panopolis in the 5th century, cites four and has them as daughters to Helios and Selene, titans of the Sun and Moon. They are Eiar (Spring, a youthful and merry woman with a crown of flowers), Theros (Summer, a maiden carrying corn and a sickle), Phthinoporon (Autumn, described as having a dry and withered body, carrying fruits), and Cheimon (Winter, a veiled woman with snow on her body).
- In a general sense, Persephone/Proserpina was the goddess of springtime and the new growth, and was often depicted as carrying sheaves of grain. In the most common version of her myth, the growing season occurred when she was in the surface world (and thus symbolically alive) while the cold, inert season occurred when she returned to the underworld (and thus symbolically died alongside plant life).
- The Horae group of minor deities is occasionally portrayed as personifying the seasons and representing the passage of time. The exact makeup varies, as does their parentage and position on Olympus.
- Irish Mythology has at least three goddesses representing the seasons:
- Brigid (pr: bree-jid) represents spring as well as healing, poetry, and smithing.
- Áine (pr: awn-ya), in addition to being a sovereignty goddess and goddess of horses, is also the goddess associated with summer, possibly as an extension of her role as a sun goddess.
- The Cailleach (pr: call-yahck) is the goddess most closely tied to her season, that being winternote . Some of her titles include "Hag of Winter", "Queen of Winter", and "the Storm Hag". She's said to wield a staff that freezes the earth with its touch, and is a guardian of animals as they struggle to survive harsh winters. Much like winter weather, she can be both gentle and mild, or fearsome and harsh depending on her mood. She's also the apparent oldest of the goddesses listed here, with many stories implying that she was already ancient when the world was young.
- While the Philippines are a tropical nation, they have distinct seasons such as dry and wet seasons determined by the direction of monsoon winds. In Philippine Mythology, the gods Amihan and Habagat personify the monsoon winds, with the gentle Amihan representing the northeast monsoon who carries mild cool winds, while the aggressive Habagat represents the southeast monsoon who carries stormy moist winds.
- Wonder Tales from Scottish Myth and Legend
, collected by Donald Alexander Mackenzie: "Beira, Queen of Winter" focuses on Beira, the elderly, cold and terrifying queen of winter, and her son Angus the King of Summer and his queen Bride. Beira seeks to preserve her power as long as possible, and when the thaw comes, she sends out spring storms, frosts, and icy winds to stymie growth and beats the ground with her hammer to make it hard as iron, while Angus' reign brings forth growth and fertility to the land. A figure named Father Winter also appears briefly, but his involvement in this struggle isn't strongly clarified.
- The fantasy anthology program Once Upon a Tune has at least four separate episodes featuring this idea; the personficiations are different each time.
- In "Time Unlimited" (also known as "Time Incorporated"), Summer, Autumn, Winter, and Spring are junior executives at Father Time's company; they try to take charge when he goes on a vacation, only to cause quite a bit of chaos.
- Different season-people (still named after their seasons) "No More Rainy Saturdays", where they refuse to cooperate with Mr. Fiddle's plan to have it never rain on Saturday.
- Differently-named personifications of seasons show up in "Canadian Calendar", including both Old Man Winter and Jack Frost, as well as Robin for spring.
- A personification of Autumn alone shows up in "The Fall Guy", where he causes havoc amongst various animal couples out of envy and lovesickness.
- Magic: The Gathering: Bloomburrow, a plane home to talking mice, rabbits, frogs, and other small animals, doesn't have regular seasons per se. Instead, the seasons are embodied in and brought by the Calamity Beasts, immense elemental animals that roam the world and bring changes in climate, precipitation, and growing cycles in their wake. The named seasons are primarily the ones associated with the Beasts that wander through the civilized valley of Bloomburrow most often.
- Beza, the Bounding Spring
, is an elk covered in grass, flowers, and fruit that embodies the spring season and new growth. When she passes through, life bursts into new growth, and harvests are rich. Summer is instead brought on the scorching wings of the Sun Hawk, while winter howls in the wake of the Blizzard Elk.
- Odder seasons come in the wake of other beasts. The Season of Deep Waters, a time of swelling rivers and floods, is brought by Eluge, the Shoreless Sea
, a titanic gar. The Season of Long Night, which hides the sun and brings starlit darkness even in the day hours, comes with the passing of Maha, Its Feathers Night
, a vast owl.
- Beza, the Bounding Spring
- RuneQuest:
- Valind is the god of winter and the glaciers of the north. He comes south each year during the Darkness season to spread his chill over the land, and must be fought in a yearly duel by Orlanth at the height of the following Storm season to be driven back north. He is usually depicted as an old man, dressed in little beyond a loincloth or kilt, his long white hair and beard crusted with ice.
- Voria, the Spring Virgin, is the goddess of spring. She was the last child of Ernalda the Earth Mother, who remained protected within her mother’s body through the Great Darkness and the dying of the world and emerged with the first Dawn to spread the promise of new life. In the world of Time, she is reborn at the beginning of each Earth season to start the cycle of life anew.
- Among the Heortling tribes of Esrolia and Dragon Pass, the seasons are personified as two land goddesses and spouses of the legendary hero Vingkot, termed the Summer Wife and the Winter Wife. The Summer Wife, depicted as a green-skinned woman wearing a loose net robe and copper jewelry, is generous and kind, and shares the land's gifts freely. The Winter Wife, depicted with black or grey skin and white hair, and wearing long skirts and a fur cloak, is greedy with her gifts, and her bounty always comes with a price.
- Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Flower Princesses are personifications of the seasons.
- "Tytannial" represents Autumn. She's WIND Attribute and autumn is typically a windy season. In addition, the flower that the princess emerges from, the Camellia, typically blooms in late Autumn.
- "Number 87" represents Winter. The card features snowflakes in its artwork and is WATER Attribute. Its flower, a cactus flower, is the only one of this family's flowers capable of blooming in winter due to the climate differences of a desert environment.
- "Talaya" represents spring. It's also WATER Attribute and spring is typically a rainy season. The flower that it's based on, the cherry blossom, blooms around April.
- "Mariña" represents Summer. It's FIRE attribute, and Summer is universally the hottest season. Sunflowers are the only flower featured in the princesses' artwork that blooms in summer.
- Hadestown: A take on Classical Mythology, the story has Persephone in her traditional role as the goddess of springtime. Her return from the Underworld every six months, in a bright green dress, signifies the turning of the season, though since Hades keeps Persephone later and later due to his increasing possessiveness, Persephone becomes resentful and the seasons become unbalanced so that winter instead goes right into summer. This is resolved by the end, as Persephone and Hades rekindle their relationship thanks to Orpheus, and Hades is able to let go of Persephone more easily, bringing nature back into balance.
- The Snow Maiden: The titular character is the daughter of Grandfather Frost and Spring Beauty. There is also Yarilo, the god of the summer sun and summer in general.
- The Tale of the Nightingale, the Emperor, and Death, a long-running production at the Zazerkalye Theatre in Saint-Petersburg, Russia, directed by Alexander Petrov and based on Andersen's "The Nightingale": The narrators of the story are the personifications of seasons: Green Dragon Zheng (spring and early summer), Red Bird Li (high summer), White Tiger Dui (autumn), and Black Turtle Kan (winter). They also signify the passage of time (and each of them is very unwilling to step aside for the following season). Fittingly, it's during the morose Black Turtle's reign that the Emperor has his close call with Death, and the Black Turtle is implied to be Death's active ally.
- Harvest Moon: The Winds of Anthos: The four Harvest Sprites are both themed after and named after the Latin names of the seasons: Ver (spring), Aestas (summer), Autumnus (autumn), and Hiems (winter). Ver has pink cherry blossom hair, Aestas wears a pearl hairclip, Autumnus wears a headband, and Hiems wears winter clothes. While not antagonistic, the winter spirit Hiems does fit the tradition of Winter being different from the others: Ver, Aestas, and Autumnus all have designs that skew towards Ambiguous Gender and wear the same leafy clothes, while Hiems looks strongly feminine and wears a sweater and thick woolen skirt.
- RuneScape: The plane of Renmark was transformed into four distinct lands, with a ruler representing each season — the Queen of Snow for Winter, the King of Roses for Spring, the Queen of Sunrise for Summer, and the King of Leaves for fall. Of these, only the Queen of Snow has had an in-game presence, typically popping up during Christmas events.
- Screaming Head revolves around Mr. Head, a walking human head who has four wives: Summer, Zima, Primavera, and Aurelia.
- Monster Camp: Dahlia's main quest line involves her and the player character being recruited by Calor, a sentient meteor and the herald of summer, to take out the heralds of autumn, winter, and spring to create a year-long summer.
- RWBY has the four maidens of spring, summer, fall, and winter. They are supposedly four sisters of a fairytale in their universe representing aspects of the seasons. The reality is that they are four powerful individuals harnessing the greatest amount of magic, but they can be passed on to others if one of the maidens expires. Their default powers control the elements that come with their seasons, but they can access other types of magic, not limited to their element.
- Shen Comix: One comic
personifies the seasons in the north vs. the south. In the north, spring is a cute little flower and summer a cute little cartoon sun, while fall looks older and more rebellious, and winter takes the form of a snowman with a menacing grin. In the south, summer is incredibly ripped while still having a cute face, and the other three are dead.
- Class of the Titans: The four Horae of Greek mythology are the goddesses of the seasons and are maidens of Persephone. They mostly provide portals of transport for the students, though, as goddesses of passage, they have limited powers over time, which was helpful when Cronus was trying to redo the events of the Titanomachy, and the heroes needed to go back and stop him.
- ComiColor Cartoons: In "Jack Frost", late autumn and winter are personified by Jack Frost, who heralds winter proper by coloring green leaves and pumpkins in autumn shades and painting frosty designs on windows, and Old Man Winter, the winter proper, a cruel old man made out of dripping ice with a long white snowy beard who spreads snow, ice, and cold wind. "Summertime", released the following year, depicts the opposite seasonal change, as the sun wakes up and angrily chases off Old Man Winter with his rays, but he returns later to try and restart winter and has to be fought off and melted by the forest's creatures.
- Strawberry Shortcake (Classic): In "Spring for Strawberry Shortcake", Spring Is Late, so Strawberry and her friends go looking for it. They find it in the form of a young girl, who would rather keep playing in Winter's snow than bring Spring to the world, but not before also meeting Old Man Winter.

