Not specific to recent times, but in general, every single year, tonight is the worst night of my year.

Winter's start tends to coincide with the start of the Christmas season.
By the time I'm walking the dogs in full dark, Christmas lights have begun to appear.
As November turns to December and Christmas comes closer, the lights proliferate and the dogwalks and nighttime errands become journeys of illuminated exploration.
Each new house that lights up is a site of potential wonder.

I love walking the dogs this time of year, and we frequently pick out new routes to see what fresh optical delights await us.

Then comes 12th night.
And the lights all go out.

Life goes back to dark, damp, cold misery.

And I absolutely hate it !
Passionately, down to the roots of my very soul.

If it were up to me, the lights would stay up until Easter, until the nights were lighter again.

But it's not up to me.
So tonight marks the start of winter proper.

The literal: Dark Night Of The Soul.

Hey C_A… maybe you should buy a flashlight

Lmao, don't talk to me about flashlights and dog walking.

You don't need them unless you're in the woods. On the paths and fields it never gets dark enough to need one, we're not that rural.
There's always more than enough background scatter to see by. If you let your night vision develop.
On the rare occasions there is no cloud cover to bounce streetlights, the stars and moon supply all the light you should need.

If you must use a light, then use one that's as dim as you can get away with.
One that actually expands your night vision, rather than destroys it.

The bastards who go around imitating lighthouses, do nothing but destroy their night vision and limit their vision to the beam itself.

And they insist on shining the damn things in your eyes.
There are a lot of people who don't know just how lucky they are.

But one of these days someone's going to have one ripped from their head and inserted where nothing ever shines !

But I never said that and if it should happen - it definitely wasn't me and I wasn't there

It's a totally seperate issue from enjoying Christmas lights.

In the UK it's traditional to take them down 12th night.
There doesn't seem to be any guide to when you light up. Some barely wait for Halloween to be over and some wait till a couple weeks before Christmas.
And some miserable buggers never have any.

So it's a constantly changing landscape of colour and motion.

And it's all gone away for another year

Yeah it is interesting, all countries have their own Christmas traditions and schedules.

In the UK Christmas was pretty much created by Prince Albert, Queen Victoria's husband. Who brought over a lot of German traditions, and with an almost blank canvas, created a lot of his own.

It's why American traditions differ so much, and indeed why most countries all have their own traditions.

I have no idea what is so significant about twelth night, other than it being a great night to be a drummer