As November begins, light or its lack becomes something of a focus. The American poet William Cullen Bryant described the end of October, leading into November, as when “suns grow meek, and the meek suns grow brief.” In England, bonfires traditionally illumined the hills on these days as the harvest season ends.

Here I share some random thoughts on light:

Daylight Savings Time: This weekend ends Daylight Savings Time (DST). Clocks will be turned one hour backwards. Personally, I prefer the autumnal “falling back” over the vernal “springing forth.”

I’ve noticed something of a cultural shift over the years. In the past, DST had two major opponents: farmers and parents. Farmers disliked DST because animals are not clock-driven. Parents did not like DST because it meant kids going to school in the dark from December through February. That’s why the attempt to impose year-round DST in the early 1970s quickly failed.

Since then things, including the culture, have changed. Senators Marco Rubio and Rick Scott of Florida have led a campaign to make DST permanent, and the bill has more supporters than detractors. I rarely hear the argument that it’s bad for kids on winter mornings. I’ve been suspicious that this shift – and especially the lack of parental opposition – might be indicative of the anti-child shift of our larger culture. Studies by the Institute for Family Policy and the National Marriage Project show increasing numbers of Americans spending more years of their adult lives without children present. I’ve wondered whether this shift reflects the indifference and sometimes masked hostility towards children, especially in our elite culture.

On the other hand, there has also been a shift away from mornings. The latest “science” (I put it in scare quotes because I am not sure it’s as much proven as asserted) claims that children need more sleep than they are getting and, therefore, many schools (at least on the East Coast where I live) are shifting towards later start times. If that’s the case, even the darkest depths of winter may be avoided by beginning school later.

But it’s also a cultural shift. Forget about “early to bed and early to rise”; Benjamin Franklin lived over two centuries ago. We have shifted to evenings and nights. I saw it in my own children, who stay up long after I would have been allowed at their ages. Is there a need for commensurate ecclesiastical change? After all, how many parishes still have morning front-loaded daily Masses, perhaps one at lunchtime, but generally far fewer evening Masses? Even as a kid, one parish in my town always had a daily Mass at 5:20 that was well-attended. Implications for pastoral care?

Cemetery Lights: One October 31 I remember driving in the evening to my mother-in-law’s home, about five hours south of Warsaw, then mostly through rural parts of Poland. I was struck by one thing. No matter how small the village, on this night you would know where the local cemetery was because, in honor of All Souls, it would be ablaze with candles that shown across an otherwise dark horizon. I used to jokingly say if you were looking for an investment in Poland, get into candles from November through Christmas: you’d make a fortune.

Poles take All Souls Day seriously. I remember another year visiting the former Nazi concentration camp Majdanek, next to Lublin, on October 30. There is a parish adjacent to the camp and, that Sunday, the priest was leading a procession through the parish churchyard in honor of All Souls. As a child, it was a de rigeur part of growing up on the last Sunday of October when the priests from my Perth Amboy, NJ, parish descended on the parish cemetery for the annual procession around the graveyard. It was a powerful reminder of the communion of saints, a reminder that the cemetery was as much a part of the “parish plant” as the church, the school, the rectory, the convent, and the parking lot. I think something was truly lost when dioceses took over the Catholic “cemetery business.” I knew the people who are buried around my grandparents’ grave at St. Stephen’s; I have no idea who lies around my parents in the diocesan cemetery, whose commonality was not being fellow parishioners but date of death. (Maybe we need to get back to new parishes having cemeteries… before we let the bishops close the old parishes so that nothing is left of them but their cemeteries.) And, of course, during that annual parish cemetery procession the candles were ablaze on each family’s plot.

Luce: Finally, this week, the Vatican introduced its “mascot,” “Luce.” What exactly the mascot is for is unclear. At first some said World Youth Day Korea, then an expo in Japan, while others opined it is for Holy Year 2025. “Luce” (which means Light) was designed by some trendy Italian designer of dubious associations. It looks like an Asian animated film creature, dressed in a yellow raincoat with a staff, semi-muddy boots, and a multicolor Rosary around her neck. Archbishop Rino Fisichella, pro-prefect for the “New Evangelization” in the Dicastery for Evangelization, introduced the doll to the public this week. Why and how this anime figure is supposed to promote the New Evangelization is hardly clear to me. Dear Vatican, please shed some Luce on it. Far from illuminating, I found it cringe kitsch. What is more concerning is that a cleric with the rank of Archbishop could be prevailed upon to introduce such cringe kitsch to the world and pretend seriously this somehow will advance the Gospel.