The dark moon.

In The Homeric Hymn to Demeter, Demeter is the Goddess who gives wheat to mankind.

When her daughter, Persephone, is taken and she is distraught.

Nothing grows!

Mesopotamian myth gives us names for similer deities who suffered the same fate as Persephone.

Her siblings so to speak, are Dumuzi (Male and possibly represents beer/ barley) and Geshtinanna (Dumuzi's sister whose name means heavenly grape-vine.

For aunts Persephone has Inanna, Queen of Heaven  and her sister Ereshkigal, Queen of the Underworld.

Both Inanna and Ereshkigal are daughters of Father Moon.

Nothing grows when Persephone is gone.
She is like the moon a bearer of fertility.

But instead of her descent as a death, she becomes the life-force underground; the power of regeneration.

It isn't too difficult to change the story from one of lamentation and sorrow to a story about the moon; meaning, the light and bright moon full moon controls the water of life.

The dark moon, the hidden, lost moon is the one that does all the work.

Making winter -the dark quarter of the year- by that kind of logic, the most important season of all.