Well Dragan, you should make a trip up to Edmonton, Alberta where I lived for almost 11 years. Do it in January or February. You'll love -40 (take your pick C or F).

>>>> invigorating weather (cold, but not brutally so), etc.
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>>>Cold? C'mon, you're just 100 miles more north than I am. Can't possibly be cold. Slightly chilly, I'd agree, or just chilly if there's wind.
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>>This is only my second winter in CA and I just don't relate to it yet. I lived in NYC and Upstate NY until I was 35 so my memories of what Christmas weather should be like are kind of ingrained.
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>Still not exactly the winter I have in my bones. My home city is, geographically, even more north than Toronto, and enjoys the same continental climate as the rest of the Pannonian flatland (spreading from Carpatian mountains to parts of Slovakia and Czech Republic, Vienna, northwest Croatia, and any Serbia north of Belgrade), with the addition of košava ("the scythe wind") which blows from the canyon Danube makes between Serbia and Romania. It blows three - hours, days or weeks.
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>Though we don't get that much snow there (actually had a series of snowless winters in the seventies), it gets really cold. Worst is the mid-February spell of several nights with -20 to -25 C (-4 to -13 F). I was once out on just -18, with a 40 mph wind... the longest two minutes in all my winters :). Not that my jaw was shaking - the spine was.
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>So these coastal winters here are more like, pardon my Serbian, "wind-up pussycats" :).