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OGUNQUIT, Maine — With the Winter Solstice rapidly approaching, a group of friends smoking cannabis last night spent their entire session debating what the concept of the “darkest night of the year” actually even means.
“I’m like… if it’s ‘dark,’ it’s just dark, right? Like, once it’s black, it’s black. It can’t get blacker than black… right?” asked Mark Goddard, the night’s host and social circle’s most expert gravity bong engineer. “There’s no degrees of dark, and approaching dark is just dimly lit. I guess you can describe it as ‘dark’ prior to being actually dark, but dark is just dark.”
“Unless that’s pitch black, and dark is a measure,” added Goddard, counting all the variations of “dark” on his fingers. “Maybe I’ve been wrong all along. Wow. Is the Solstice even real?”
“No, dude. I mean, yes, the Solstice is real, but ‘dark’ is a measure confirmed by pupil dilation,” countered friend Samantha Calloway. “Look at how long it takes for your eyes to adapt to different levels of darkness. The Winter Solstice is the day it takes your eyes the longest to transition… unless your eyes are already super dilated. Let me see your eyes — are they all red and dilated? Shit. I can’t see anything now. I think we’re all spending too much time in the Solstice. Anybody got a light, or a candle or something?”
“It’s all about perception. How dark it is outside depends on how dark it is inside. What’s going on inside your optic nerves — are they dark or bright?” affirmed fellow smoker Cameron Durgeon, rambling to no one in particular and staring off into the sky. “And what does ‘dark’ even mean? If it’s the absence of light, shouldn’t it be the absence of measure? Like, if you think about it that way, the Winter Solstice isn’t the darkest night of the year, but rather the most negative bright day of the year.”
“Wait, y’all. What if ‘darkest night’ means darkest in vibes — like the gloomiest and saddest of all days?” asked Maggie Bumfield, who hadn’t spoken since smoking almost 20 minutes before. “Maybe that’s why seasonal affective disorder is a thing. It’s also the day the Europans descend from the sky to drain plasma from our spines to power their starships, so there’s that, too. It’s all tied together.”
Unfortunately, when Goddard’s mother told the group and told the group, “The Solstice refers to the amount of time it’s dark — it means ‘longest night of the year,’” a new debate erupted about what actually counts as “night.”
Cameron Foley is a comedian and writer. He’d prefer you call him Cam.
