Tag: winter reflections

  • 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

    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