Where's the Sun Gone?
Posted by Arwen Mosher in Homemaking on Tuesday, November 16, 2010 6:15 PM
When I was a young adult I loved “fall back” because it gave us an extra hour of sleep one Saturday night.
As a mother I dread it for two reasons.
First, little ones don’t pay any attention to what the clock says, so a toddler who normally rises at 6:00am will think that 5:00 is the new proper time to wake up. No extra hour of sleep for his parents!
Second, the end of Daylight Saving Time means the evenings are DARK. This time of year the sun sets around 5:00pm, and it’ll only get earlier for another month to come.
Summer evenings are long and lovely, but in the colder months it gets dark long before Daddy’s home from work. In some ways I like the coziness of twilight evenings (especially at Christmas when we’ve got the tree up). But it can sometimes feel depressing corralling the children and preparing dinner when outside it looks like the middle of the night.
In January and February I’m used to the dark evenings, plus I have the reassurance that the days are gradually lengthening. In November we suddenly lose an entire hour of the evening, and then it just keeps getting worse!
I’ve considered trying to get the government to make Daylight Saving Time permanent (since we already have it for more than half the year anyway) but I’ve got a sneaking suspicion they won’t much care what I think. So I’ve got to come up with other solutions.
I think I once read about someone declaring this time of the year “candle time” and lighting one every evening between the end of DST and the start of Christmas. Since we’ve firmly established that the small things do matter, I think this is a good idea. I’ve just got to get a candle and find a place to keep it away from grabby little paws.
But I’d love other ideas, too. Has anyone found good ways to beat the dark-evening blues? (Assuming you dislike the dark evenings - I bet there are some people who love them!)
If you’ve got any brainstorms or just want to commiserate, please share!
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