I Went to Bed Dressed Like Ebenezer Scrooge for a Week. Here’s What It Did for My Sleep

Time: 7 hours 27, minutes (11:40 p.m.—8:00 a.m.)

Awake: 52 minutes

REM: 1 hour, 15 minutes / Light: 5 hours, 17 minutes / Deep: 55 minutes

Sleep score: 78

Thursday

There was some strange beeping noise happening on the street below my window in the morning, which produced a prolonged period of being awake. For the second consecutive night, I was back to just wearing underwear beneath the gown, which had just been cleaned (along with the hat) by the lovely couple who owns my neighborhood laundromat. It took me a while to calm down for bed here because this was the night that Tyrese Haliburton hit his frantic shot to close Game 1 of the NBA Finals, and I had to consume a bunch of content about that, naturally. The whiplash of hootering and hollering about modern basketball and then strapping on pajamas from the 1840s really made me chuckle.

Time: 6 hours, 45 minutes (12:18 a.m.—8:19 a.m.)

Awake: 1 hour, 16 minutes

REM: 49 minutes / Light: 5 hours, 15 minutes / Deep: 40 minutes

Sleep score: 70

Friday

Finally, the last night of this wildly silly endeavor. Hilariously, my notebook tells me I dreamt I had a lab report due, a fitting take on the classic I forgot to do my homework or study for the test, even though I have not been a student in eight years recurring dream. (I also wrote “dreamt of grape lollipops,” for what it’s worth.) Once again, with nothing to do on Saturday morning, I slept in, and woke up without that foolish hat being anywhere near my head. This was on the heels of seeing T-Pain, Mk.gee, and Tyler, the Creator’s sets at Gov Ball, so the exhaustion of standing for so long is part of the stew here. At long last, I knocked out for eight hours, and was in a state of deep sleep for two of those, a new personal best! Thank you, music.

Time: 8 hours, 14 minutes (1:21 a.m.—10:59 a.m.)

Awake: 1 hour, 24 minutes

REM: 1 hour, 1 minute / Light: 5 hours, 5 minutes / Deep: 2 hours, 7 minutes

Sleep score: 79

The Takeaways

The main item in the honk shoo ensemble—the long nightshirt—was a bit like a hospital gown, with three buttons and a breast pocket on the front, and then more snap buttons on the back. It was made, as many a novelty Amazon purchase are, from an imported polyester cotton. Wearing it made me feel stifled, so I usually wore it with the bottom two buttons on the back undone for optimal comfort.

The worst part was the hat. It refused to stay put as I slept. I’d wake up at various stages of this exercise to find the hat lying next to me, tucked between pillows, or banished deep into a hard-to-find cavern of sheets. The little ball that dangles from it, while cute as hell, provided its own challenges. It would get stuck underneath my shoulder blades—I’m a side sleeper—and always required some care when I’d roll over to find a more comfortable position. Boy, I hated that thing.