Category: Reflection / Soul Food Essays

  • Light the Candle Anyway

    Light the Candle Anyway

    I like Christmas.

    I like the lights strung too tightly across porches, the decorations that appear overnight as if the neighborhood agreed on a quiet truce with darkness. I like the music—some of it at least—and the movies most of all. The old ones. The ones that arrive every year like familiar witnesses, reminding you that time keeps moving whether you’re ready or not.

    I genuinely like these things.

    All of them.

    And still, something is missing.

    There’s supposed to be a warmth that comes with this season, a fullness that settles somewhere in the chest, a feeling people speak about as if it’s inevitable—like snowfall or sunrise. But for me, that space feels hollow. Not empty exactly. More like a room that remembers being lived in, but hasn’t been occupied in a long time.

    I’ve noticed that absence more acutely as the years pass. Christmas doesn’t hurt.

    It just… echoes.

    The Space Between

    For a long time, I responded to that hollowness by quietly opting out.

    No decorations.

    No tree.

    No deliberate effort to invite the season inside my walls.

    Not out of bitterness—just a kind of emotional economy. Why set a place at the table for a feeling that might not show up?

    But this year, something shifted.

    Not dramatically. Not with a revelation or a promise to feel differently. Just a small, stubborn thought that kept returning, dressed up as a borrowed line from a movie I’ve carried with me for decades:

    If I build it, it will come.

    So this year, I’m decorating.

    Not because I suddenly feel festive.

    Not because joy has arrived early and knocked politely.

    But because sometimes hope isn’t about how you feel—it’s about what you do anyway.

    Choosing Hope Without Demanding Joy

    There’s an unspoken rule around the holidays: you’re supposed to feel something specific.

    Gratitude.

    Warmth.

    Cheer.

    A sense of completion.

    And if you don’t, it can feel like a personal failure—like you missed a memo everyone else received.

    But Christmas Eve, if you really look at it, isn’t about arrival.

    It’s about waiting.

    It’s the night before. The space between. The moment when nothing has happened yet, and that’s precisely the point. Christmas Eve doesn’t ask you to open gifts, sing loudly, or prove anything.

    It asks you to sit with anticipation—however fractured that anticipation might be.

    For some people, that anticipation is joyful.

    For others, it’s complicated.

    For many, it’s heavy with memory, absence, and unfinished grief.

    And still, the night remains.

    The Candle

    That’s where the Candle comes in.

    Lighting a candle isn’t a declaration of happiness. It isn’t a performance of belief or a promise that everything is fine. It’s an acknowledgment of darkness—and a refusal to let it have the final word.

    A candle doesn’t banish the night.

    It simply says:

    I’m still here.

    The Quiet Work of Building Something First

    I haven’t decorated my home in years. Not because I hate the season, but because I didn’t want to confront the gap between what Christmas is supposed to feel like and what it actually feels like inside me.

    Decorating means effort.

    It means intention.

    It means admitting you want something to happen—even if you’re not sure it will.

    This year, I’m doing it anyway.

    Not as a ritual of joy, but as an act of survival.

    I’m hanging lights not because my heart is full, but because it isn’t. I’m placing decorations not to summon nostalgia, but to acknowledge that I’m still capable of making space. Still willing to try. Still open enough to say, maybe.

    Maybe warmth doesn’t arrive on its own.

    Maybe it needs scaffolding.

    Maybe it needs permission.

    Or maybe it never comes at all—and the effort still matters.

    Because the real loss isn’t failing to feel the right thing.

    It’s giving up on the possibility of feeling anything.

    Holding Space

    Christmas Eve doesn’t need you to be joyful.

    It needs you to be present.

    It needs you to recognize that choosing hope doesn’t always look like celebration. Sometimes it looks like lighting a candle in a room that feels too quiet and letting that small flame testify on your behalf.

    Sometimes hope is understated.

    Sometimes it’s tired.

    Sometimes it shows up without confidence.

    But it shows up.

    And tonight, that’s enough.

    If your heart feels full, celebrate.

    If it feels heavy, you’re not broken.

    If it feels hollow, you’re not alone.

    Light the Candle anyway.

    Not because you’re sure something will come—but because the act itself is a declaration:

    I am still willing to make room.

    And on Christmas Eve, that may be the most honest form of hope there is.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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    Resources for Hard Times

    If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.

    👉 Resources for Hard Times

  • Borrowed Light: The Holiday Movies That Raised Me

    Borrowed Light: The Holiday Movies That Raised Me

    Salt, Ink & Soul — Humanity Through Food Series 

    There’s a certain kind of light that only shows up this time of year.

    Not the bulbs strung across rooftops or the plastic icicles flickering in windows.

    I mean the glow of a television in a dim living room—the kind of light that spills across the carpet like a familiar voice calling you home. The kind that makes the rest of the world feel far away, wrapped in a kind of winter hush.

    That’s the light I fell in love with.

    When I say I love the Christmas season, I don’t just mean the day. I mean the entire orbit around it—the slow build, the anticipation, the small rituals that become lifelines. The lights, yes. The chill in the air, certainly. But most of all, the movies.

    My love of holiday movies began long before streaming existed. Before playlists and algorithms. Before DVDs and VHS tapes. Back when a movie came only once a year, and you had to earn it by waiting.

    I remember how the TV commercials would announce that A Charlie Brown Christmas was coming. It felt like a sacred date—one night, one hour, one chance. If you missed it, you missed it. No do-overs. No recording it for later.

    You came in from outside early.

    You washed up if someone told you to.

    You grabbed your spot on the floor or couch—not too close to the TV because a parent had already warned you about “ruining your eyes.”

    And when the opening notes played, it felt like the world exhaled.

    The same thing happened with How the Grinch Stole Christmas!—the original one. The one with the gravelly voice singing, “You’re a mean one, Mr. Grinch.” To this day, I still play that song like a yearly ritual, as if the Grinch’s redemption is a message I need whispered back to me every December.

    Those two early films shaped not just my childhood but my taste in Christmas music—the quiet melancholy of “Christmas Time Is Here” and the playful growl of “Mr. Grinch.” They were two sides of the season: hope and humor, softness and mischief.

    As I grew older, the list grew richer.

    There was Miracle on 34th Street, a story that insists the world can be gentler than it is.

    Three ghosts were ushering me through adulthood, arriving through different retellings of A Christmas Carol—one starring George C. Scott, another with Patrick Stewart, and the third, unexpectedly profound, in The Muppet Christmas Carol.

    Later came the unconventional additions:

    • Fred Claus
    • The Wiz
    • Sleepless in Seattle
    • Last Holiday starring the luminous Queen Latifah
    • The Holiday

    And, of course, no list is complete without It’s a Wonderful Life with James Stewart—a film that crawls inside your ribcage and whispers, “Do you understand how many lives would break if you disappeared from your own story?”

    These movies became more than entertainment.

    They became checkpoints—seasonal markers, emotional recalibrations.

    Something feels misaligned in me until I sit down and watch them all.

    I even look forward to adding new ones each year.

    Some fade.

    Some stay.

    The good ones linger like old friends.

    Good holiday films do the same thing to me that good books do.

    A real book doesn’t let you skim the surface; it drags you under.

    You forget you’re reading.

    You live inside the pages.

    Movies, even though they hand you the visuals, still manage to sneak past your defenses.

    The imagination is less involved, but the emotions are still all yours.

    You feel them.

    You wear them.

    You walk around with them for days afterward.

    But there’s something deeper at work in all this.

    Because December is beautiful, yes—but it’s also unbearable for so many people.

    The lonely.

    The grieving.

    The single.

    The ones who don’t have a home full of noise and company.

    The ones who struggle in the silent hours after the festivities end.

    Holiday movies do something quiet for those of us walking through that kind of December.

    They make space.

    They offer warmth that asks for nothing in return.

    Sometimes the comfort doesn’t come from a whole room or a crowded table.

    Sometimes it comes from a screen glowing softly in the dark—a story reaching across years, wires, and winter air to sit beside you.

    These movies don’t fix your Life.

    They don’t pay your bills.

    They don’t fill the empty chair or soften the ache of absence.

    But they lend you their light.

    A borrowed light.

    Just enough to see by.

    Just enough to make the season survivable.

    Just enough to remind you that stories—whether read or watched—have always been how we navigate the hardest seasons in community, even when we’re watching alone.

    So yes, I love the Christmas season.

    Not because it demands cheer.

    Not because it promises perfection.

    But because it gives me these small rituals—these films that arrive like quiet companions, asking only that I sit down, press play, and let myself feel whatever I feel.

    And every December, when the world feels a little colder, a little heavier, a little lonelier than I want to admit—

    These stories remind me that even in the darkest stretch of the year,

    There is still light worth borrowing.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

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    Resources for Hard Times

    If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.

    👉 Resources for Hard Times

  • The Ceremony of Making Something Out of Nothing

    The Ceremony of Making Something Out of Nothing

    There’s a particular kind of magic that never makes it into cookbooks.

    Not the magic of white tablecloths and tasting menus, not the magic of perfect knife cuts and gleaming copper pots. I’m talking about the quiet, stubborn miracle that happens when the fridge holds more air than food, the cabinets echo, and there’s still a meal on the table by nightfall.

    Making something out of nothing.

    For a lot of people, that’s just a phrase. For others, it’s a lifestyle. A survival skill. A family tradition passed down without ceremony, like the dented pot nobody throws away because “it still works.”

    I once heard someone say that the true food of a people isn’t what’s served at the holidays or in the fancy restaurants—it’s what the poor eat. That’s where the real story lives. In the cuts of meat no one wanted, the vegetables that were cheap and plentiful, the flour that had to stretch further than it ever should have been asked to stretch. In those kitchens, creativity wasn’t a hobby; it was the only way the lights stayed on, and the children went to bed with something warm in their bellies.

    You can look at a culture’s poverty and see suffering, and you wouldn’t be wrong. But if you look again—closer, slower—you’ll see something else, too: genius.

    The Alchemy of Leftovers

    Think about barbecue for a moment.

    We talk about it now like it’s a celebration food—weekends, tailgates, festivals with smoke curling into the sky and people lining up for ribs. But the roots of it are not glamorous. Barbecue was born out of necessity. Taking the toughest, least desirable cuts of meat—the ones that needed hours of slow heat and coaxing—and turning them into something tender, something worthy of licking your fingers for. Smoke as both flavor and forgiveness, covering the sin of scarcity.

    The same story stretches into stews. All over the world, in every direction you point, there is some version of a pot where vegetables, bones, scraps, and whatever else was on hand were coaxed into something that could feed a family. The names change with languages and borders, but the spirit is the same: water, heat, time, patience, and the belief that “this has to be enough, so I will make it enough.”

    And then there’s bread.

    Bread might be the most universal testimony of all. Flour, water, salt, and a little fat if you have it. Maybe yeast, maybe a starter handed down from someone’s grandmother or captured wild from the air. That’s it. The meagerest of ingredients. You stir, knead, rest, wait, bake. If you’ve ever torn into a crusty loaf that came from a small, cramped kitchen, you know how much better it can taste than the factory-perfect slices lined up under plastic in the grocery store. There’s something in that handmade loaf that can’t be written on a nutrition label: intention.

    The factories can make bread.

    The people in cramped kitchens make meaning.

    The Hidden Ceremony

    When you grow up making something out of nothing, it doesn’t feel like a ceremony. It feels like stress.

    It feels like staring into a pantry with three things in it and thinking, How am I supposed to feed everybody with this? It feels like doing quiet math in your head while your stomach growls, calculating how far a pound of ground meat can go if you bulk it with rice, beans, or noodles. It feels like shame when you compare your table to someone else’s, when their plates look like abundance, and yours look like problem-solving.

    No one hands you a script and says:

    “Welcome. Tonight’s ritual is called Stretching the Groceries Until Payday.

    The dress code is whatever’s clean. The incense will be the smell of onions hitting hot oil, because that’s how you make almost anything taste like you tried.”

    But if you step back for a moment and look at it from a different angle, you start to see how sacred it really is.

    The chopping of onions and celery, the rinsing of beans, the sizzling of the cheapest cut of meat in the only pan that hasn’t lost its handle—that’s choreography. The tasting and adjusting, adding a pinch more salt or a splash of vinegar until it tastes “like something”—that’s liturgy. The ladling of portions, making sure everyone gets some, even if you quietly take a little less—that’s communion.

    You may not call it that.

    Call it dinner.

    But there’s a ceremony going on anyway.

    Beyond Just Getting By

    There’s a narrative that follows people who live like this: You’re surviving. You’re scraping by. You’re doing what you have to do.

    All of that can be true.

    But I want to offer another truth: survival doesn’t happen by accident. It happens because people make it happen. Because they refused to surrender. Because they used creativity the way others use trust funds.

    Most people “make things work” in ways they never fully acknowledge. They fix broken days with duct tape and coffee. They stretch paychecks the way their grandparents stretched stew. They hold themselves together with jokes, playlists, and the last thin strand of patience. They assume this is normal, unremarkable, just what adults do.

    But making something out of nothing is not a small thing.

    It’s not “just getting by.”

    It’s a skill.

    It’s an art.

    It’s a kind of quiet heroism.

    There’s a difference between enduring and owning your resourcefulness. Enduring says, I had no choice. Owning it says, Look at what I did with so little. Look at what I can do again, on purpose.

    That shift—from shame to respect—is where survival becomes empowerment.

    The Story the Kitchen Tells About You

    When you look back over your life, you might remember the hard nights: the ones where the cabinets were almost empty, the ones where you ate the same thing three days in a row, the ones where you felt like failure was sitting at the table with you.

    But I hope you can also remember this:

    You were there.

    You showed up.

    You cooked anyway.

    Maybe you turned bruised fruit into cobbler.

    Maybe you turned half a bag of rice and a can of tomatoes into a meal.

    Maybe you turned nothing more than eggs, flour, and oil into flatbread that carried the weight of everything else you had.

    Each time you did that, you were building something bigger than a single meal. You were creating proof.

    Proof that you could face an empty fridge and not let despair win.

    Proof that your imagination could stand in for money you didn’t have.

    Proof that you could create comfort out of nearly thin air.

    If you can make a meal out of scraps, what else can you make?

    A day. A week. A life.

    If you can walk into a kitchen with almost nothing and walk out with a pot of soup, then somewhere inside you is the ability to walk into a season of your life that feels like a stripped-bare cupboard—and still walk out carrying something nourishing.

    The story the kitchen tells about you is not just that you were poor, or struggling, or “doing your best with what you had.”

    The story is that you were powerful long before anyone gave you the language for it.

    From Survival to Ceremony

    It’s easy to romanticize struggle from a distance. Easy to talk about “resilience” when you’re not staring down a disconnect notice or wondering how you’re going to stretch bus fare.

    This isn’t that.

    This is about honoring what you’ve already done—and what you might still be doing right now. It’s about taking a second look at the things you thought were just signs of your struggle and recognizing them as evidence of your genius.

    When you decide that making something out of nothing isn’t just a desperate reflex but a ceremony, the meaning changes.

    You season that pot, not just because salt makes things taste good, but because you refuse to let your life be unseasoned.

    You knead that dough not just to develop gluten, but because your hands remember they can transform a raw, powdery mess into something that rises.

    You stir that stew, not just to keep it from burning, but because you understand that careful, patient attention is part of what turns “barely enough” into “this really hit the spot.”

    That’s empowerment.

    Not a motivational quote on a wall.

    Not a stranger telling you to “grind harder.”

    Empowerment as a lived truth in your body:

    I have done this before. I can do it again. I can do it on purpose.

    You’re More Capable Than You Think

    You may not be standing in front of a stove right now. Maybe your “nothing” looks different—an empty bank account, a dwindling sense of hope, a dream that feels underfed.

    Even so, the ceremony still applies.

    You know how to stretch.

    You know how to improvise.

    You know how to season your life with the little joys and small luxuries you can afford—a slow walk, a favorite song, a battered book that’s been read too many times.

    You’ve been making something out of nothing for a long time.

    Most people will never fully see how much work that takes. They’ll eat the plate you set in front of them and say, “This is good,” without ever knowing what it cost you to make it possible.

    But you know.

    And I want you to hear this clearly:

    You are not defined by scarcity.

    You are defined by what you create in the face of it.

    The ceremony of making something out of nothing has always been yours.

    You’re more capable than you think.

    Kyle J. Hayes

    kylehayesblog.com

    Please like, comment, and share

    Resources for Hard Times

    If you’re looking for practical help, food support, or community resources, you can visit the Salt, Ink & Soul Resources Page.

    👉 Resources for Hard Times