Hades, the Lord of the Underworld was cold taciturn, depressed and globally anti-social.
Hades surprisingly felt passionately in love with his niece Persephone and decided to marry her.
The problem was that he knew that the mother of Persephone, his sister, the energetic Demeter loved so dearly her daughter that she would never let her go into The Underworld, the kingdom of the shadows. So the manipulative Hades tricked first Zeus , the father of Persephone to give him his approval and then he carefully planned the abduction of Persephone .
According to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, one sunny day the young Persephone was gathering flowers in a field, accompanied by her close friends, the Ocean Nymphs. The carefree Persephone moved away from her companions in search of the most beautiful flower. When she reached out to pluck a wondrous narcissus, Earth yawned open and Hades appeared in his golden chariot and snatched her away to the Underworld.
Demeter, the heart broken mother of Persephone was looking in vain for her daughter day and night. The land and crops of the earth began to wither. After a while, the Sun, looking at everything from the sky, felt sorry for the goddess and told her what happened. Demeter went to Zeus and demanded that Persephone be returned, or else she would not let the earth blossom again.
Zeus sent the Messenger God, Hermes, to Hades with the command to release Persephone. Before returning her to Hermes, Hades forced Persephone to eat 3 pomegranate seeds. Hades knew that if someone ate food in the Underworld, they could never really escape from the world of the dead.
So with Zeus as a mediator, they all finally reached an agreement that Persephone would spend three months with her husband from December to March and therefore no plants would grow on earth in her absence.
Life would be back in nature when Persephone would be back with Demeter, her loving mother.
That is the reason why there are winters, when nothing grow as Demeter is simply too sad to infuse life in nature.