Look for Light

December 17, 2020

I'll admit: The dark is getting to me this year.

We've been hurtling toward the Winter Solstice, losing more daylight each day. This was a much bigger deal before about 1900, but human inventiveness started conquering the problem in the 1870s, bringing electric light even to non-rich people around the turn of the century. Nowadays, of course, we take the light switch for granted. (Take away our light, Mother Nature? No problem, we'll make our OWN light!)

But this year, the dark feels like it's closing me in. In the open air, we have freedom as well as safety, but COVID, along with the waning of the light, has killed our play time. Nowadays, it's dark by 4:45, and even the dogs don't want to play outside by the time I get home. Pre-COVID, if I wanted some light after it got dark, there were plenty of places I could go to get some, but now, what's available is pretty much just home. I think it's getting to all of us: We feel closed in by the dark as we never have before.

It all makes me appreciate afresh the technology that has gotten us where we are today. As regular readers know, I'm a big proponent of appreciation and of technology, so about 20 years ago, I created my own quirky version of a holiday to celebrate it. Monday, December 21, is the Winter Solstice, the "darkest evening of the year," the day we symbolically most need technology. And so every year on the Solstice, my family celebrates those who have made possible the comfort, safety, prosperity, and happiness that we enjoy in this corner of the world. I call it Lightbulb Day.

We especially need reasons to be joyous in 2020 as we are actively staving off the dark. This week's rollout of the vaccine has made celebrating easier: History will surely regard it as the greatest accomplishment of the modern world to date. So on Monday when my family members each name heir favorite invention during our Lightbulb Day celebration, I'm pretty sure what we're all going to say. And then we'll probably pile in the car, support a local restaurant by getting takeout, and drive around looking at all of the pretty houses (because that seems to be where 2020's family vacation budgets all went), and we'll feel even better.

Very soon, it will stop getting dark and start getting light: Starting Wednesday, each day that passes will bring an extra half-minute of light to our day. By the middle of January, it will be about a minute every day, and by the middle of February, about 3 minutes more each day. It gets faster from there. It happens every year, and even COVID can't stop it.

You can always find light if you look for it.

—Deb