Today the sun rose at 7:23 am and set at 4:49 pm. That’s only 9 hours and 26 minutes of light and for those living north of me, they had even less today (only 8 hours and 56 minutes in Portland ME for example).
Many people are doing a lot of complaining about the short days and the dark rather than celebrating.
Not only is today the shortest day of the year but the last full moon of the year, called the Cold Moon or the Long Night Moon, occurs in just a few more hours. And not to forget the annual Ursids meteor shower which peaks tomorrow also. All in all a very special day and night.
In the good old days before Edison’s invention of the light bulb, our lives modeled nature. We rose with the sun and went to bed when it was dark. In the shorter days of winter, we rested and restored like the trees that dropped their leaves and slowed down and sent their energy down into their roots instead of up or like the animals who hibernated.
Before electricity, some 130 years ago, the sun regulated our sleep cycle. When it got dark our brain activity slowed, our melatonin production increased and we prepared to sleep. When the sun rose, the cycle reversed.
Humans are diurnal– we function best if we sleep when it’s dark.
Jacob Liberman wrote in Light: Medicine of the Future (1991), “the cycles of human lives relate to the cycles of our environment” or at least they should and that we are designed to respond to them just as plants and animals do.
Since we now live in a 24/7 world that never goes to sleep, it has become harder and harder to honor our natural rhythms, cycles and seasons. This modern day lifestyle of working indoors, artificial light, sunglasses, sunscreen, not slowing down in the winter time in spite of the shorter hours of sunlight has led to millions feeling down and out in the winter time, the “winter blues”.
What was “once a time of year when nature assisted our inner growth by supporting us in going into the unlit aspects of our souls, has now become a time of depression and sadness dreaded by many.” (Liberman, p120).
I, for one, am heading outside to revel in the glorious full moon, hoping to see a few shooting stars, and grateful for this Long Night Moon and the longest night of the year.
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