It's that time of year: days are short and nights are long. Perhaps it is in these long stretches of darkness that we feel our mortality - and our fragility - the most. Perhaps that is why universally reach out for sound and light. Every culture almost has a festival of light and darkness around now. From Diwali to Samhain, with Eid-al-Adha or Las Posadas inbetween. Many of them have a theme of battle between good and evil, with the ultimate victory of morality. Light plays a prominent feature in most of these. Symbolically, it may represent the light of knowledge and wisdom (as in the Hanukkah candle) or it may just be inspired by the literal need for light to vanquish the growing darkness.