Somewhere along the way, we decided that the sun setting didn't have to change anything about how we live.

It's 7 p.m. in July? Lights on.

It's 4:30 p.m. in December? Lights on.

Apparently every room in the house needs to look like it's 2 in the afternoon, regardless of what the actual sun is doing outside.

I've become increasingly interested in doing the opposite.

And it's one of the reasons we use so many candles in the winter.

Not because my house looks like a Scandinavian lifestyle magazine. (It most certainly does not.)

Because I want nighttime to actually look like nighttime.

We've gotten very good at eliminating darkness

I've written before about why I think darkness deserves as much attention as sunlight.

We obsess over getting morning light, vitamin D, red light therapy, and all the different ways light affects our biology.

But then the sun goes down and we turn on every overhead LED in the house.

Which seems a little contradictory, no?

Our circadian system uses changes in environmental light to understand what time it is.

Bright light during the day helps establish that rhythm. As evening approaches and light levels fall, the body begins preparing for night.

Melatonin is part of that process.

And light exposure in the evening can delay or suppress its natural rise.

So I've become quite particular about what happens in our house when the sun goes down.

Not in a neurotic way. I'm not confiscating everyone's phones at sunset or insisting we navigate the kitchen in total darkness.

I just think the difference between daytime and nighttime should be fairly obvious.

Firelight is a very different kind of light

For most of human history, darkness didn't mean absolutely no light.

We had fire.

And fire has a very different light profile from most of the artificial lighting we use today.

A candle flame produces a warm spectrum, rich in longer wavelengths, with relatively little short-wavelength blue light.

And it's dim.

This is important because our circadian system responds to both the spectrum and intensity of the light entering our eyes, as well as when we're exposed to it.

A candle on the dinner table is a very different light exposure from a bright overhead LED.

It doesn't mean candlelight has magical healing properties.

It means you can still see your dinner without convincing your brain that the sun has come back up.

Which I think is rather useful.

Why I'm particularly interested in this during winter

Living in Calgary, you can't exactly ignore the seasons.

In June, there's still light in the sky ridiculously late.

In December, you're making dinner in the dark.

And I don't think those two environments are supposed to produce identical daily routines.

I've become much more interested in letting winter be winter.

Getting whatever natural light is available during the day. Going outside. Experiencing some cold. Eating differently. And allowing the evenings to be darker.

I don't want to spend five months artificially recreating July inside my house.

Those long winter evenings are an opportunity to reduce light exposure without having to go to bed at 5 p.m.

Enter candles.

Where we actually use them

We use candles at breakfast on dark winter mornings, at dinner, and during my nightly baths.

I particularly love them in the bathroom.

I have a bath almost every evening, and there's something wonderful about not having bright overhead lighting on while you're supposed to be winding down.

No elaborate wellness protocol required.

Just turn off the lights and light a candle.

And I think this is an important distinction for me lately.

I'm less interested in adding elaborate things to my routine and more interested in changing the environment so my body can do what it already knows how to do.

Sometimes that means opening a window for morning light.

Sometimes it means turning off a light at night.

Very sophisticated stuff.

So why beeswax?

This is where Honey + Harvest comes in.

I've always preferred simple materials, whether we're talking about what goes on our skin or what we bring into our home.

Robyn makes her candles from beeswax and cotton wicks, without added fragrances or dyes.

I appreciate that.

I'm not interested in adding synthetic perfume to the air every evening just because I want a little light.

And pure beeswax has its own subtle, naturally honey-like smell, which I love.

But I also want to make something clear: I'm not suggesting beeswax candles are air purifiers or that burning anything indoors produces zero emissions.

They're still candles. There's still combustion. Ventilation matters.

For me, the appeal is the simplicity of the ingredients and the quality of the light.

And frankly, they're beautiful.

I don't want to optimize every waking minute

I think there's a tendency in wellness to make everything increasingly complicated.

Special glasses. Special bulbs. Special supplements. Another device. Another protocol.

Some of those things have their place.

But I love when the simplest option is also a sensible one.

Turn off the overhead lights.

Light a candle.

Have dinner with your family.

Let it be evening.

You can still read, cook, tidy the kitchen, and enjoy your home. Use whatever additional task lighting you actually need.

And obviously, candles come with the usual responsibilities: stable holders, distance from anything flammable, and never leaving a flame unattended, especially with children around.

I don't want to live in total darkness from 4 p.m. until bedtime.

I just don't want to erase the night.

A little less light might be exactly what we're missing

We've spent an extraordinary amount of effort making our houses bright, warm, and comfortable at every hour of every season.

And there's plenty to appreciate about that.

But I wonder whether some of the things we've engineered out of our environments were useful signals in the first place.

The changing seasons.

The cold.

The long nights.

The gradual transition from daylight to darkness.

I don't think we need to recreate ancestral living conditions to benefit from paying attention to them.

Sometimes I think we just need to stop overriding everything.

So that's why there are candles burning at our dinner table in winter.

Not really for the ambience.

Although the ambience is rather lovely.

It's because I want my evenings to feel like evenings.

And I suspect my body does too.

If you're curious about the candles we use, read Robyn's story about why she started Honey + Harvest, or explore her beeswax candles in our shop.

For more on the biology behind this, read Darkness Is an Input Too.