Since I started blogging in the Huffington Post, I’ve written a solstice article every year. Sometimes it’s been in the Huffington Post, sometimes I’ve put it on my own blogsite, The Psychological Historian, and the last two have appeared in the Yorkshire Bylines, where I write regularly as a citizen journalist.
As most world cultures have celebrated the shortest day of the year for millennia, the solstice festival is an ancient and inclusive celebration of the season in which the sun starts on its gradual journey back to the longest day. Yule and Saturnalia were celebrated in the British Isles long before the conversion to Christianity.
The solstice festival in the British Isles has constantly evolved, a glorious cultural mash up, heralded by the annual arrival of mythical figures such as the pagan Green Man, his descendants St Nicholas, Father Christmas and the more commercial Santa Claus. Most recently they have been joined by more multi-cultural creations, such as the joyous Bhangra Santas.
And, looking back into the most ancient records of human civilization, as the longest night of the year begins and the sun returns to the place where it starts to retrace its journey back to the longest day, we enter a time when the veils between past and present become thinner, giving us an impetus to look back and to look forward, to take stock of where we have reached on our own life-journeys.
A year in citizen journalism
Thus far, the decade of the 2020s has proved momentous, and it shows no sign of slowing down in 2023. We have lived through plague in the pandemic, a European war in the Ukraine, political unrest in China and Iran, the rise and fall of populist leaders across the world, and here in the UK, the ongoing saga of Brexit, which has given rise to increased food prices and ‘food poverty’. If we consider climate change as an incarnation of pestilence, the mythical horseman of the apocalypse have arrived with a vengeance, and as yet, show no sign of riding off into the solstice sunset.
Last year I engaged with the rise of collective anger in the British population, principally aimed at Boris Johnson and his government, their callous flouting of the lockdown laws that they had personally created, their mishandling of Covid in general, and the unravelling Brexit deal that Johnson had forced all Tory candidates in the 2019 election to support.
Of course, Johnson was removed from office in Summer 2022, and his even more incompetent and populist replacement Liz Truss was then ousted from office in less than six weeks after crashing the British economy. A disastrous Truss premiership was in fact predicted by Yorkshire Bylines during the Tory leadership campaign. But many problems emergent from these events are still with us. Added to which, we have raging inflation, a fuel crisis and a growing number of strikes affecting public services.
I marked the historic end of Queen Elizabeth II’s 70-year reign with a reflection on the psychology and sociology associated with the national bereavement of a much-loved monarch, and explored the genetic lineage and future leadership potential of a new baby-boomer King.
I’ve also written several articles relating to children’s issues this year, reflecting on the wreckage wrought by arrogant and careless governance, and the increasingly glaring requirement to do better for the future, including the provision of more inclusive childhood and education services that foster emotional robustness and transferrable knowledge and skills.
I aim to write further on this topic over 2023, given that one of the most important functions of ‘speaking truth to power’ in citizen journalism is to hold government (of all political stripes) to account for its preparation of children and young people for the challenges ahead, both societal and ecological; when childhood is poorly managed within a society, the future of families and communities is inevitably blighted.
Sleepless in Yorkshire: the ‘fringe’ article that wasn’t
Earlier this year, I decided to talk about biphasic sleeping on a regular radio programme I present for teachers on Teacher Hug Radio (given that many teachers report sleeping problems). Finding it well received, I published an article on the same topic last month in Yorkshire Bylines.
My ongoing studies in psychology over 30 years never really helped me with my insomnia; nothing that I learned ever really worked for me. Whatever I did, I was inclined to sleep in two phases: dropping off to sleep, usually in front of the television, during the mid-evening, then waking around midnight and being unable to get back to sleep until about 3am.
I’d always presumed that my problems with insomnia were not of particular interest except (of course) to myself. However, a small historical research project a few years ago turned up a concept that revolutionised my views, and my coping strategies on my own sleeping patterns. This was the fact that until the industrial revolution, the way that I naturally seem to sleep had in fact been the norm: the ‘small sleep’ followed by a ‘big sleep’, which its re-discoverer, Roger Ekirch, had labelled ‘biphasic sleeping.’
I went into speaking and writing about this thinking that it might be of fringe interest; that the hit rate for any such article would be modest, and a few people might reply commenting on similar experiences. But in the event, the response was much greater than I ever expected, especially when I tweet – and/or ‘toot’ – about it in the early hours, after waking from my own ‘first sleep’; I find a surprising number of many equally wakeful souls respond, frequently commenting that they find information about biphasicality quite helpful.
It may be that the anxiety-provoking events of the tumultuous 2020s has created more ‘biphasic sleepers’ or maybe we were all out there all along; I have no idea. However, this response has encouraged me to further explore my own biphasic sleeping more closely in 2023, and I’m hoping that others will join in, documenting their own experiences, to create a more prominent discussion.
I will be posting on this topic regularly from the New Year onwards, sometimes on Twitter, but principally on Mastodon, which I have recently joined for respite from the increasingly ‘down the rabbit hole’ experience that Twitter is becoming; already shaping up into a major ‘one to watch’ news story for 2023.
Moving forward into 2023
Over the holiday period, however, I will not be focusing upon social media, but spending the break reflecting on another year that has passed and contemplating the year to come.
In doing this, I will be honouring what a long line of ancestors have done since time immemorial, from Ecclesiastes “time to weep and a time to dance” to Dickens’ Victorian Scrooge, pitchforked into his reflection by the visitation of three spirits, and Hollywood’s poignant 1944 reminder to the WWII generation that a time of war was about to give way to a time of peace.
And one thing is as true today as it has always been: when the sun sets in the Northern Hemisphere on 21 December, we will start on our journey back into the light, hoping for the best and preparing for the worst in the new year to come. So, forward into 2023: here comes the sun.
