The winter solstice. What darkness gives us.

I want to make an argument for darkness. Not metaphorical darkness — actual darkness, the physical absence of light, the thing we have become very good at eliminating.

The human history of winter is a history of firelight and early sleep. Before artificial lighting, the long winter nights produced a particular kind of life: more sleep, more interior life, more story-telling, more of what people call 'reflection' because there was simply less to do in the dark and more time to think. The pre-industrial winter was long and dark and cold, and in that darkness, things that can't be seen in full light became visible.

I'm not romanticising poverty or cold. I'm observing that we have, in eliminating the dark, also eliminated something that the dark was producing.

My children don't experience darkness at home. They experience dimmed LED lights and blue light from screens and the orange glow from the street that means their rooms are never completely black. The dark is available to them only when we are somewhere without electricity, which is rare, or when there is a power cut, which my daughter experiences with something very close to delight.

My daughter experiences a power cut with something very close to delight. She is not wrong. The darkness is giving her back a kind of quiet that the light usually prevents.

My daughter experiences a power cut with something very close to delight. She is not wrong. The darkness is giving her back a kind of quiet that the light usually prevents.

The darkness is giving her back a kind of quiet that the light usually prevents.