It’s amazing how evergreen that general sentiment seems to be.
The transition to longer daylight during winter solstice in the less-connected, less-commercialized times made for more grounded local, personal engagements. Writing that letter, making that treat, giving that gift, sharing that moment during the colder, darker times. Many of these individual productions are no longer created. Lost and replaced by layers of conveniences and alternative social interactions developed with each generation. Piled on through centuries of commerce. No wonder its evergreen.
For that time of year, as an aging introvert, the darkest days remind me to keep working on my one-on-one engagements.
> It is the month of December, and yet the city is at this very moment in a sweat. Licence is given to the general merrymaking. Everything resounds with mighty preparations, – as if the Saturnalia differed at all from the usual business day! So true it is that the difference is nil, that I regard as correct the remark of the man who said: "Once December was a month; now it is a year."
(https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Moral_letters_to_Lucilius/Let...)
The problem with the statement isn't that the people saying it are always wrong; the problem is that it is always being said to some extent and therefore carries no particular information content in its mere statement. Rates of statement might be relevant but we have nowhere near the data we'd need historically to determine that.
Whoever said that?