Passants rentrant du travail dans une rue européenne à la tombée du jour, un soir pluvieux de novembre.

What becomes of our lives when Europe enters the dark season?

Every year, there comes a slightly strange moment when we discover, almost with surprise, that it is dark.

Not the late January darkness, the one we accept without question because we are in the middle of winter, but the first real darkness of autumn, the one that suddenly awaits us at the end of the workday when, in our minds, it is still afternoon. A few weeks earlier, we were heading home in the daylight; now, at five o'clock, the shop windows are lit, headlights reflect on the wet road, and we search for our keys in the dark at the door.

The change is particularly dramatic in northern Europe, but it affects the entire continent. As November progresses, light retreats from our days while our lives do not slow down at all. We work at the same hours, take the same trains, still walk the dog, and still do our shopping at the end of the day. Better yet: no sooner do we enter the time of year when many of us would gladly sleep in than the preparations for Christmas begin, along with the shopping, the invitations, the trips to organize, and that curious collective acceleration that precedes the holidays.

Our calendars clearly do not seem to have received the message of the season.

Yet our bodies, our cities, and our habits have perfectly noticed that the light has changed.

We live by the clock, but our bodies still look to the sky

Electricity has allowed us to become largely independent of the sun. We can work in Stockholm or Brussels at eight in the morning in December just as we do in June, have dinner at eight in the evening under perfectly comfortable light, and extend the evening in front of a screen without worrying too much about what is happening outside.

Yet our bodies have not become indifferent to the alternation of day and night. Light helps regulate our circadian clock, the internal system that helps organize periods of sleep and wakefulness, and seasonal variations in light can influence our alertness, sleep, and mood. This obviously does not mean that we all fall into seasonal depression on the first Sunday of November: seasonal affective disorder is a real condition that should not be confused with the simple desire to stay under the covers when it is raining outside.

However, there is something much more ordinary: we simply receive less natural light during part of the year, especially if we spend our days indoors. A study conducted in Sweden among more than 15,000 people also found an association between greater exposure to daylight during the winter and a lower likelihood of reporting depressive symptoms. This does not turn a midday walk into a universal medicine, but it does remind us that going out while it is still light may not be as insignificant a detail as it seems.

There is even a lovely curiosity from the North: a recent study conducted in Uppsala found that snow, by reflecting light, increased participants' light exposure and improved their alertness. So that is one reason to look with a slightly more indulgent eye at that first snow that blocks traffic: when it finally covers the endless grays and browns of December, it does not just make the landscape seem brighter, it actually does.

The problem is that November does not ask us to slow down

This may be one of the most curious contradictions of this time of year. While the days shorten and some people feel more drowsy or experience a drop in energy, our modern societies hardly change their pace at all.

And as December approaches, they even tend to do exactly the opposite.

We must finish what needs to be done before the end of the year, start thinking about the holidays, buy gifts, plan meals, book train or plane tickets, respond to invitations, and sometimes host family. Shops bustle, cities organize their Christmas markets, and calendars fill up just as the idea of a quiet evening at home becomes particularly appealing.

This end-of-year stress should not be confused with the effects of light deprivation. Seasonal affective disorder, for example, is linked to a seasonal pattern of depression associated with changes in daylight hours; what English speakers sometimes call the holiday blues, linked to the family, financial, or social pressures of the holidays, is something else entirely. The two can, of course, have the bad idea of meeting at the same person.

This may also be why November sometimes gives us that particular feeling of being pulled in two directions. One part of us wants to go home, close the door, and slow down; another looks at its calendar and notes that this is clearly not on the agenda.

And outside, the same streets are no longer quite the same

The dark season does not only change what happens in our heads or in our living rooms. It very concretely changes the way we use outdoor space.

Pedestrians crossing a European street at dusk, with a cyclist and cars with headlights on the wet road.

Take a perfectly ordinary scene: you leave work, cross a street, and see a car coming. Its headlights are clearly visible, you estimate its distance, and perhaps wait for it to pass. It is very easy to assume, without even thinking about it, that the driver can see you just as clearly.

Unfortunately, that is not the case.

French road safety authorities measured during a trial conducted with UTAC that a pedestrian dressed in black was visible in the headlights of a car traveling at 50 km/h only from 28 meters away, while the vehicle needed 31 meters to stop. With retroreflective clothing, the same pedestrian was spotted from 44 meters away, and the car came to a halt thirteen meters before them. More broadly, French data show an increase in accidents involving pedestrians between 5 and 7 p.m. in November compared to October, precisely when darkness meets rush hour.

This suddenly makes the small reflectors attached to coats, bags, bicycles, and sometimes dogs much less trivial. In European regions where a large part of daily travel takes place in the dark for several months, they are simply part of adapting to the season.

This focus on visibility is also reflected in certain everyday accessories, such as the reflective Jaro and Zeno headbands, or the Neon beanie, which combine their usual function with details designed to reflect light more effectively.

We continue to go out; we are simply learning to do it differently.

Since the daylight is leaving, we make our own light

This is probably the most beautiful part of the story.

As natural light decreases, we begin to turn it on everywhere.

Small lamps reappear in homes, candles return to tables, garlands are hung in windows, and cities begin to light their streets. Cafés look more welcoming from a dark sidewalk, and a lit window suddenly takes on an importance it absolutely did not have in July.

Family interior in the late afternoon of November, with two teenagers in the living room, a parent preparing a meal, and the lights on while it rains outside.

Of course, not all these lights serve the same purpose. The light our biological clock needs and the small warm lamp we turn on near the sofa are not interchangeable; the latter does not replace a walk in the daylight. But it serves another purpose, one that is harder to measure yet very present in the way we inhabit winter: our desire to make the darkness pleasant.

And this desire is not new.

Long before our electric garlands, the European holidays and traditions of the dark season already gave fire and light a place of great importance. Candles, lanterns, bonfires, and processions of light return in different forms from one country and era to another. In the North, Saint Lucia, celebrated in the middle of December, is perhaps one of the most striking images; elsewhere, Advent illuminations, Christmas markets, and lit windows gradually transform cities as the solstice approaches.

It is certainly no coincidence that we have placed so many lights in the middle of the period that has the least of them.

Ultimately, we have never stopped living with the seasons

We like to believe that our modern lives have become relatively independent of the weather and the light. Heating protects us from the cold, electricity pushes back the night, and our schedules remain fixed in our calendars regardless of where the sun is.

Yet it only takes a look at what is happening around us in November to see that the season continues to discreetly change our behavior.

We seek out daylight more. We change the way we travel when it is dark. We bring out reflectors and bike lights. We light candles, move armchairs closer to small lamps, close the curtains earlier, and look with renewed pleasure at lit windows when we return home.

And meanwhile, paradoxically, the end of the year accelerates around us.

This is perhaps what it means, at heart, to enter the dark season in Europe: to continue to lead a modern life that largely refuses to slow down, with a body and habits that know perfectly well that something has changed outside.

So we adapt, sometimes very concretely, sometimes almost without realizing it. We put light where it is disappearing, we make our travels more visible, we seek out warmth and comfort a little more willingly, and for generations, we have even placed some of the year's brightest holidays in the middle of its darkest weeks.

November may therefore not only be the month when the light leaves, it is also the one when we begin to recreate it.

 

Sources and references

Back to blog