The Holiday Season: Looking for the Light
- Marilyn Yaquinto, PhD
- Dec 18, 2024
- 12 min read
Updated: Dec 20, 2024
We’ve come to know that the holiday season involves a mixed bag of emotions. Sometimes they appear like sprays of golden light in sync with those sparkly lights threading through wreaths and blinking in shopping malls. Then, in what seems like an instant, our feelings morph into a type of menace, resembling shards of shadows conjuring up ghosts of Christmases past. A holiday “spirit” capable of creating an undertow of melancholy.
Mental health experts warn us to be aware of how the holidays can intensify our emotions. The “season” of magnified remembrances, both lovely and mournful. When people we’ve loved and lost reappear in our hearts and minds and whisper for our attention. It’s often hard to be joyful while also grappling with anxiety, even profound grief.
"Loneliness and isolation can feel exacerbated during the holiday season," notes Shilagh Mirgain, a psychologist at UW Health in Madison, Wisconsin, as quoted in an AP story about how to find peace amid the "holiday blues." Mirgain suggests rather than focusing on what everybody else is doing or dreading any plans that don't spark joy, try volunteering to help others who may be alone or much less fortunate than we are.
"There's so much opportunity to give back during this time, and I think generosity is one of the best things we can do for our own well-being," offers Mirgain.
From merry to moody: coping with an expanded holiday “season”
This tug-of-war to maintain our equilibrium is also anchored to a holiday that’s become elastic in meaning and length. It now starts in the US with a blitzkrieg of holiday sales, and doesn't let up until the January clear-out of leftover merchandise and half-priced wrapping paper.
After unpacking boxes of holiday décor this year, I got misty-eyed handling the nearly 100-year-old bulb that once adorned my grandmother’s Christmas tree. Or the stocking we had made for our dog no longer around to sniff at what’s inside. Or the tattered gift box I still cherish from a cousin who’s now drifted out of my life. Memories flood forward, enough to make decorating our apartment a battle between heartfelt joy and looming sadness, these relics faithful witnesses to our past. The process becomes as much a delicate act of preservation as a curated presentation for anyone who stops by in 2024.
It’s important to keep in mind that whatever we’re feeling is natural. And when it doesn’t feel like an organic process of ebb and flow, threatening to overwhelm us, it’s time to ask for help.
There are as many articles about how to stay mentally healthy during this time of year as there are recipes for cookies. One I found particularly helpful is from the online mental health network, Better Help. It offers the following tips for keeping such seasonal highs and lows in perspective:
Appreciate positive feelings, especially those rooted in cherished traditions.
Accept negative emotions, knowing they’re part of remembering (and come and go).
Adjust expectations, letting go of imagined perfection and embrace what’s possible.
Prioritize self-care, taking care of ourselves while we care for others, including traveling cross-town or cross-country to be with loved ones.
Embrace the joy of giving, being generous with our time and attention, along with gifts that carry meaning (not debt).
Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah?
While I grapple with the full range of emotions wrapped around Christmas, I can’t comprehend what the prolonged holiday must mean for those who are Jewish or of other faiths and cultures. Navigating the steady barrage of commercialized yet quasi-religious messaging must be a challenge, leaving them choosing to participate by default or design. For the latter, perhaps a case of “when in Rome, do as the Romans do.” For many, the Christmas holiday is just another negotiation with what’s mainstream for groups often positioned as the “other” in American society.
My neighborhood is a mini United Nations, with a nod and smile to our many Indian neighbors, many of them Hindu. Some 73% of Indians living in the US celebrate Christmas in some form or another, finding meanings that may parallel Hindu beliefs or that accommodate the spirit of Christmas.
“Hinduism is so diverse, pluralistic and tolerant in our beliefs and practices, we can make room for pretty much any outlook -- which means we’re open to different ways of coexisting with Christmas,” notes Syama Allard, whose article appeared in Religion News Service, a non-profit and award-winning source of global news on religion, spirituality, and culture, founded in 1934.
This ability to adapt also explains why the Orthodox Ethiopians running a nearby coffee shop, include Christmas décor along with objects that remind them of home. They too will celebrate Christmas (or Ganna), but not until January 7, adhering to the ancient Julian calendar.
My Jewish friends celebrated Rosh Hashana, the Jewish New Year of 5785, back in October of 2024. They’ll also ring in the more familiar and upcoming New Year of 2025, as marked by the world’s dominant Gregorian calendar, first established by the Catholic Pope Gregory XIII in 1572. Adapting and even embracing what is mainstream was certainly understood by Irving Berlin. The Jewish composer gifted the Christian world that now cherished classic, “White Christmas.” Its lyrics first encouraging us to “be merry and bright” in 1942.
While I quickly tire of the Hallmark Channel’s devotion to Christmas movies, my Jewish girlfriend is a loyal watcher. She’s committed to the entire season’s worth of formulaic boy-meets-girl melodramas, with their fake snowflakes appearing just in time for Christmas Eve. Hallmark released more than 40 new sagas for 2024, along with re-airing reruns of perennial favorites. These movies fail to provide me with any uplifting escapism.
Nor do those blow-up inflatables of Santa Claus or Frosty the Snowman on front lawns that come to life at night but look dead and deflated during the day. I believe, like Hallmark products, they’re trying too hard to manufacture delight.
Then again, I wouldn’t miss my annual viewing of “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” which I’ve watched since I was in grade school. It’s timeless. And its characters, however much the invention of cartoonist Charles M. Schultz, possess real souls, including my favorite who can’t speak much beyond a bark. Who could forget Charlie’s pathetic Christmas tree, on which a lone bulb nearly cripples it. In the end, Linus, blanket in tow, steps forward as a pint-sized, modern-day Wise Man, proclaiming his faith in the retelling of Jesus’ birth, replete with manger and shepherds, and eloquently reminding his friends “what Christmas is all about.”
[See the article, “My Jewish Charlie Brown Christmas” by James Poniewozik, who notes how this most overtly Christian TV holiday classic speaks to him “so deeply.”]
Having little family with us in Arizona for the previous six years, my husband and I celebrated the holidays with Jewish friends, including the tradition of eating Chinese take-out on Christmas Day. These memories don’t lack for joy, nor are they missing any of that celebrated communal spirit of the season. In fact, they’re among some of our best Christmas memories ever.
Although the dates vary each year by the Gregorian calendar, this year Hanukkah, the annual eight-day “festival of lights,” begins on December 25 and ends on January 2.
Frohe Weihnachten and Glædelig Jul, everyone!
The Christian world outside the US, where most of us have our ancestral roots, celebrate Christmas quite differently. Our German-born neighbor in Arizona found the expansive American Christmas difficult to grasp. He explained how Germans don’t decorate their trees until Christmas Eve, then limit the holiday rituals, for both Catholics and Protestants in nearly equal measures, to church services and family gatherings on December 25, the day actually dedicated to Christmas.
My 96-year-old mother will wake up this Christmas and declare: “Happy Birthday, Jesus.” While she doesn’t go to mass anymore, she clings to what she believes to be the reason behind the holiday’s establishment. She disapproves of what she sees as a lack of Christ in Christmas, and resists returning many a store clerk’s greeting of “Happy Holidays.” I figure it’s not about erasing Christmas, but a gesture to be as inclusive as possible in such a multi-religious society as ours.
Even in Christian Scotland, for complicated historical and political reasons before and after the Reformation, Christmas didn’t become a recognized holiday until 1958. Before that Scots didn’t speak of Christmas but of “Yule,” a time to celebrate renewal and rebirth. Yule eventually became synonymous with Christmas, as in “yuletide carols being sung by a choir,” from another holiday classic, “The Christmas Song,” written in 1945.
“Yule was a moment of hope and faith in the hardest months of the year,” notes Joriam Philipe in the online magazine of Babbel, the language-learning specialist. “Small villages would compete to become the brightest light in the darkness,” including “lights hanging in the trees.”
But before it had anything to do with Christmas, Yule was Jól, a concept left behind by the Vikings and their pagan rituals surrounding the Winter Solstice, the shortest day of the year, occurring every December 21 or 22. It was a time of celebration with many of its rituals later absorbed into the Christian world’s Christmas. (More on the Winter Solstice below.)
Modern day Scandanavians still use a version of Yule in their holiday salutations: the Swedish and Norwegians will bid us “God Jul,” while the Finns offer “Hyvää Joulual.” The Danish version, Glædelig Jul, already introduced above.
As many historians and theologians now suggest, December 25 was perhaps chosen as Christ’s birthday, not because of historical fact (difficult to pinpoint), but in part to blend into, if not replace, existing pagan traditions linked to the solstice.
Why can't these concepts co-exist? Be about welcoming the birth (symbolic or real) of the Lord and Savior, while bringing light and hope amid the dead of winter? Unlike Linus and the other 2.4 billion Christians in the world, maybe I’m still figuring out what Christmas is all about.
Spirituality and Santa Claus
Santa Claus is the most ubiquitous symbol of the holiday in the US. He's secular and commercial enough to be accepted as the face of the holiday for most Americans, including most non-Christians. Yet, his roots are deeply religious. Santa is the modern embodiment of St. Nicholas, the 4th century bishop from a city in Asia Minor (modern-day Turkey). During his lifetime, he earned a reputation (and later sainthood) for his good deeds and generosity, with a special affinity for "children, sailors, and those who were falsely accused." After his death, and over the centuries, the saint became Santa Claus, a Dutch variant of his name, and now legendary North Pole resident with devoted elves and a Mrs. Claus. The reindeer arrived in the 19th century and take us back to Scandinavia. The tradition of candy canes, too, links back to St. Nicholas, reportedly representing "crosiers, or bishop's staffs, as bishops are the shepherds for God's people."
Our new apartment this year showcases an heirloom pillow with Santa's face on it, near a table-top Christmas tree with no ability to support an angel at the top. We do, however, have a rubbery, plastic 4-inch replica of Sylvester the Cat, whom Tweety Bird endlessly teased (careful to avoid any fatal confrontation). It was also the cartoon character that lent my father Sylvester his cool factor. It’s the last one from a holiday string of lights I used to decorate the spare room in our old house, where he and my mother stayed during the holidays. Once he passed away, the lights went back into a box. While unpacking this summer, we found a lone, leftover Sylvester, who's joined our already eclectic décor, becoming another ghost to keep us company for the holidays.
Part of my limbo about the meaning of Christmas, pardon the pun, is that I’m no longer a practicing Catholic, and unlikely to formally convert to anything else at this point. My sense of religion, broadly stated, is now a blend of whatever touches my soul and satisfies my curiosity about many belief systems. There are wise words and moral teachings to be found in many books on my shelves, ranging from the teachings of Buddha to the Kabbalah. I belong to a group that calls itself the “Spirit Circle,” in which we began years ago by trying to define spirituality. We came up with no less than 20 definitions, all of which encourage kindness, gratitude, and connection with a higher power outside ourselves.
In mid-December I attended the “Joy of Christmas” concert, with the rich, soaring voices of the Cathedral Choral Society filling the National Cathedral in Washington, advertised as “a house of prayer for all people.” It’s a place equally sacred and secular, a hallowed space for dead presidents and notable dignitaries to lie in state for the nation to mourn. When the choir crescendoed with a soul-stirring rendition of “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” I felt tears welling up in my eyes. Looking over at my mother, I noticed her head was down and a tissue tucked under her nose. Like so many others, each of us were thinking about someone special we wished could be by our sides again. The choir sang to the heavens, not anyone’s singular version, but everyone’s.
It reminded me of all the mosques, temples and churches I’ve visited in my travels over the years. It’s not always about saving my soul, but coupling with the faith-filled intentions of the believers who came before and left their devout energy behind. That’s what this Christmas concert was at its heart: joyful, intentional and full of grace.
Maybe that's what Christmas is all about for me and many others as well. The mix of the sacred and the sublime. Highs and lows associated with remembrance, obligation, and gift-giving. It remains all so familiar but ever-changing, exacting costs that can deplete us, but also fill us with hope.
Winter Solstice, anyone?
"Our holidays "don't have to be a Hallmark movie. Give yourself permission to do it differently this year," suggests Ellen Lee, a geriatric psychiatrist at UC San Diego Health. And that's exactly what we decided to do this year. Something different.
While our apartment still reflects plenty of Christmas cheer, albeit on a scaled-down version, we're expanding our hearts and minds (and taste buds) this year to encompass the wider world of the Winter Solstice that occurs just a few days prior to Christmas Day. What better way to take advantage of our new multicultural neighborhood than to bring home samples of food inspired by the far corners of the Earth to mingle with our more standard holiday staples? The Winter Solstice embraces even longer memories than ours, and, at its core is an expanded search for light and love, with food connecting people to enduring cultural meanings.
Most people living today in the Northern Hemisphere commemorate this December day, with festivals dating back to ancient times. (In the Southern Hemisphere, similar festivals occur but take place in June.)
Persia’s Shab-e Yalda was established roughly 5,000 years ago, and is still observed in Turkey and other Middle Eastern societies once influenced by ancient Persia. The word Yalda itself translates into “birth” or “rebirth,” and seems perfect for our globe-trotting party table.
We’ll borrow their tradition of including pomegranates, and Persians' belief in the solstice being about "light triumphing over darkness, warmth over cold, and togetherness over solitude." They also relish the gathering of loved ones "to share stories, poetry, and traditional foods, creating an evening rich with cultural warmth and spiritual renewal." Sound familiar?
As NPR chronicled, other major solstice-based events include the Dongzi Festivals, celebrated by most of Asia’s 4.5 billion people, with roots to in the Han dynasty (230 BCE). Since we have a Vietnamese restaurant across the street, we’re adding tang yuan (glutinous rice balls) to the menu as symbols of "reunion and prosperity."
Although we won't be in Egypt for this solstice to experience the sun rising between the columns of the Temple of Karnak, we can certainly include some baklava at the dessert table. Ancient Egyptians celebrated the solstice with a 12-day festival, one for each day of the calendar that honored the most powerful of their deities, the sun god Ra. A 2023 archaeological discovery confirmed the Egyptians’ respect for the solstice, uncovering a tomb from 1813 BCE designed to capture the elusive sun on this shortest day of the year.
The oldest example of a monument built for the solstice, according to National Geographic, is in Newgrange, Ireland, where a large tomb mound built around 3200 BCE is located. It features a tunnel facing the solstice sunrise that washes the main chamber in light for about 17 minutes that day. We can certainly find something Irish to add to our table as well.
Even closer to home, Native Americans honor the solstice with some worshipping ancient sun deities, with others revering the day for its promise of renewal and respect for the “celestial seasons.”
No doubt our tasting menu will be a joyful blend of solstice-inspired foods from nearby eateries and grocers, including an Austrian cafe, where we can find strudel or stollen to celebrate Christmas and the German version of the solstice: Wintersonnenwende.
As for drinks, Winter Solstice Martinis and non-alcoholic drinks using pomegranate juice and seeds, are not only lusciously red much like our Christmas décor, but also long embraced as signs of "light and goodness" and "a symbolic opposing force of darkness."
Whatever any of us do to make the holidays special, remember to do so from the heart. As the song lyric suggests: let our hearts be light. Do whatever it takes to keep those spirits bright. They may come as ghosts from Christmases past or those insisting we reflect on our current situations or ponder our futures (akin to those other Dickensian ghosts).
Most of the world’s 8 billion residents celebrate some aspect of their belief systems during this prolonged “holiday” season, ensuring none of us are alone during this time of year. If nothing else, look up at the sky and embrace the sun and its light for however long it appears during this darkest of seasons. And, remember, it shines on every one of us.
“Don’t let the past steal the present," offers the British-born, American writer Taylor Caldwell. "This is the message of Christmas: we are never alone.”
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