The evidence is convergent. Multiple independent sources reach the same conclusion, the underlying mechanism is well-characterized, and even the field's most cautious voices treat it as worth doing.
If days are long and getting longer, that means melatonin is reduced. The total amount of melatonin is less because light is more, therefore melatonin is less. If days are getting shorter, light can't inhibit melatonin as much, through the summing of photon mechanisms that we talked about before, and that melatonin signal is getting longer.
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therefore in short days AKA long nights you get a lot more melatonin released in long days and short nights you get less melatonin
Conversely, when you have an 8-hour day in the winter, the amount of melatonin that corresponds to that 8 hour day is getting progressively greater and greater because why? Days are getting shorter. So melatonin is increasing from day to day to day. Every cell and system of your body pays attention to this and as a consequence most people not all but most people feel they have a little less or sometimes a lot less energy and a slightly lower mood in the winter months.
So melatonin correlates with daylength. And if we are viewing more light, we have less melatonin. We view less light, we have more melatonin.
And that signal is conveyed to all the systems of your brain and body. And this is why most people, not all, but most people feel like they have more energy in the spring.