Effect On People
Many find it difficult to fall asleep during the night when the sun is shining. In general, visitors and newcomers are most affected. Some natives are also affected, but in general to a lesser degree. The effect of the midnight sun, that is, not experiencing night for long durations of time, is said to cause hypomania, which is characterized by persistent and pervasive elevated or irritable mood.
The midnight sun also poses special challenges to religious people such as Jewish people who have religious rites based around the 24 hour day/night cycle. In the Jewish community this has given rise to a body of Jewish law in the polar regions, which attempts to deal with the special challenges of adhering to the Mitzvah in such conditions. Another related religion that suffers from this is Islam, where fasting during daylight hours in Ramadan would imply total abstinence. Also, Muslims have 5 obligatory prayers daily which are timed according to position of the sun, so it becomes difficult for them to decide the prayer times; however, they can follow the timings of the closest place that has a normal sun cycle or the timings of Mecca, the holiest city of Islam. The Seventh Day Adventists and other Sabbath-keeping Christians keep the Sabbath day holy when the sun goes down Friday, until the sun goes down Saturday, and is Joseph Bates suggested to keep the equatorial sunset as a reference to the Sabbath time, for those that deal with the midnight sun because the equator sunrise and sunset occur consistently throughout the year plus or minus 10 minutes at 6 a.m. and 6 p.m. respectively..
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