Getting into the minds of the people I research is important to me. It can help lead the way to discoveries. It also makes those people so much more real. It also helps to remind me that our ancestors were a fascinating combination of just-like-us and totally alien. If we assume that they were all the one or all the other, we will certainly be all wrong.
Today we look at the clock on the wall, the clock on the microwave, the oven, the car dashboard, the coffeemaker, the stove fan (at least in my kitchen), the computer screen… If none of those is present, a wristwatch or phone probably is. None of them even requires the old daily ritual of inserting the key and winding the clock.
This time of year reminds me of a different way, a way of marking time. The little Grinch in my head points out that a steady flow of Christmas related ads and spam marks the time by trickling into my inbox like the the sand flowing in an hour glass—117 unread items, must be 10 am… If I tell that little Grinch to go away and let me enjoy the season, my mind can get to other, older ways of telling the time. The kids always look forward to the evening lighting of the Advent candle that marks of the time by burning away a little wax every day. In the morning they set about finding and opening the doors on the Advent calendar that makes a game out of the simple task of marking the time and indicating the date.
The lighting of the candles in an Advent wreath reminds me that time can be experienced in intervals of weeks rather than minutes and seconds. The pace is clearly something out of the past. It represents a different way of thinking about time. Advent starts on no one date and lasts different numbers of days, depending on the year. It is a tradition, an observance, and a reminder of the way our ancestors experienced time—uneven, drifting, slower than the blinking LED numbers on my microwave.
Tonight I passed a window with a menorah. Its candles marking days that begin at sunset and that start from a date set by the cycles of both the sun and moon. None of my ancestors marked time in just that way, but I have researched people who did. It was yet another reminder of the different ways that time has been, and still is, seen.
All these things, at this one time of year, cause us to stop for a moment and consciously mark the time. Something that was once so normal, a part of our ancestors lives, that now we rarely do. Take the time to notice.