Rejoicing in a Weary World

'Tis the season of darkness (and that's not a bad thing)

The sun goes down over Lake Como, Italy

The last two weeks of December often/usually/without fail weigh me down with an exhaustion that seems particular to the season. It comes on for no apparent reason or, rather, for all the obvious ones: Look at what we do to each other, to our planet.

I know I am not alone in my weariness. Ninety-four years ago, Langston Hughes said he, too, was Tired:

I am so tired of waiting,
aren't you,
for the world to become good
and beautiful and kind?
Let us take a knife
and cut the world in two -
and see what worms are eating
at the rind.

I can’t stop seeing the worms. More and more, the deeper I dig myself free of all the myths I’ve been sold, I see them. Parasitic greed and cruelty posing as progress under banners of empire and profit.

For those of us who feel the weight of the world more intensely than usual this time of year, holiday cheer is abrasive. The loud insistence to be MERRY and BRIGHT! To consume and consume and consume. The frantic giving and getting of colorful piles of paper-wrapped stuff you would never have otherwise purchased. The futile lists of resolutions and insistence that because we start a new calendar, we might also make ourselves over and become something new. The expectation that this jangling festivity will engender some sort of magic, some sense of hope.

The older I get, the weirder it feels, the more jarring the dissonance between the world as it actually is and the world seen through holiday-colored glasses. Perfect, smiling families and towers of gifts and powder-light drifts of snow and sweetly symmetrical gingerbread houses. As if for these year-ending weeks, hunger and genocide and sadness and injustice and corruption and fear don’t exist. Are pushed to the margins, seen only as phantasmic flickers in the corners of our eyes. Something to ignore until we’re done celebrating, or longer.

“It’s insane to me,” wrote some internet sage, “the way we’ve made this time of year around Winter Solstice into the most chaotically-busy-high-expectations time of year, when the Earth is literally out here being like, Babe, it’s cold and dark, have a snack and take a nap!”

Wiser creatures than us are hunkering down into themselves and waiting for the light.

In the dark at Lake Como

I have learned to accept the dark days—to let myself feel what I feel. Stillness and a deep sorrow are appropriate in the face of our world’s many woes.

Palestine. Congo. Sudan. Yemen.
The stranglehold of white supremacy.
The cruelty of ICE deportations.
American bombing campaigns, forever “spreading freedom” with death and devastation. The ramp-up to an invasion of Venezuela under the pretense of protecting Americans from some fabricated boogeyman when everyone knows the violence is, once again, about oil. The way so-called artificial intelligence has just been folded in to daily life as if it’s something necessary, something good, when it is actually an insidious drain, not only on the earth, but on human intelligence. (In 2025, AI consumed more water than the global bottled water industry, and emitted more carbon dioxide into the atmosphere than the entirety of New York City. Seriously, rid yourselves of Chat GPT already!)

The list of worldly woes goes on.
And on.

Ten years ago, Warsan Shire wrote What They Did Yesterday Afternoon, and it’s one of those poems that will always be relevant…

     they set my aunt's house on fire
     i cried the way women on tv do
     folding at the middle
     like a five pound note.
     i called the boy who use to love me
     tried to ‘okay’ my voice
     i said hello
     he said warsan, what’s wrong, what’s happened?

     i’ve been praying,
     and these are what my prayers look like;
     dear god
     i come from two countries
     one is thirsty
     the other is on fire
     both need water.

     later that night
     i held an atlas in my lap
     ran my fingers across the whole world
     and whispered
     where does it hurt?

     it answered
     everywhere
     everywhere
     everywhere.

When I was small and afraid, I took a cold sort of comfort in the realization that the world has always been troubled. That the wars and trouble I feared were not new, because there have always been wars and trouble. It made me feel less like the world was ending and more like whatever was happening out there might be survivable.

Looking back, my childhood fears of Communists and the Cold War seem quaint. How 1980s of me. In the darkness at the end of 2025, I feel more like the world is ending than I ever have before.

“If every December crushes you,” wrote a witch whose name I don’t know, “stop forcing the cheer. Go into the dark. Learn about Krampus, the Wild Hunt, the Old Yule. This season is ancient, hushed, and full of monsters. That’s the point. If Christmas feels like a dark time, it’s because it is and has been for generations.”

Ancient, hushed, and full of monsters. Monsters new and monsters old.
The world is always ending. The world is always being born anew.

Waiting for the sun to rise over the Balearic Sea in Sète, France

Even after I stopped believing in the dear Savior of O Holy Night, I found the hymn beautiful. A thrill of hope, the song says, the weary world rejoices, for yonder breaks a new and glorious morn!

The Savior’s birth was the cause for rejoicing. The reason for the season. Jesus had arrived and all would be well. It’s a story that brings security and comfort to believers. To me, it’s nothing more than a fairy tale.

And yet a new and glorious morn still breaks across the horizon. In ancient times, the winter solstice meant a celebration of death and rebirth. The longest night always gave way to light, and the cycle of silence and scarcity gave way once more to the season of growth and abundance. Again and again, round and round. Darkness to light to darkness to light.

If you’re with me in the darkness, know that there is nothing wrong with us.

Pre-sunrise in Sète

My friend Nicole sent me a witchy winter solstice ritual that I failed to do on the actual solstice, since Marido, Mirtilo, both dogs, one bird and I took a road trip to visit friends in Italy. On December 21st, I was sitting in a van somewhere in the Pyrenees criss-crossing the border between Spain and France. But I will be home for New Year’s Eve, so I’ll pretend that’s my solstice.

I’m going to write a list of experiences, habits, relationships, patterns from the last year that I want to rid myself of. I’ll write them on small scraps of paper, one thing per piece. And then, one by one, I’ll hold each piece of paper and think about what it will be like to be free of it. I’ll thank it for what it has taught me. Then I’ll set it ablaze. Burn it to ash and release it.

I’ll turn then to a fresh set of paper slips and write again, this time listing opportunities or relationships or experiences that I want for myself for the new year. I’ll hold each one in the palm of my hand and imagine what it would feel like for these wishes to bear fruit. The witchy ritual says to pass these slips of paper through the smoke of incense while imagining them coming to fruition, but I haven’t burned any incense since 1997, so I’ll just feel the weight of them in my hand instead. Then I’ll tuck these scraps of paper into the end pages of my calendar and revisit them later.

I’m not exactly a witch, but I don’t believe a ritual has to be religious to be sacred.

Just like the darkness doesn’t have to be a thing to fear and sorrow doesn’t have to be a thing to exorcise.

Sometimes, in the cold dark days, you find small moments of light that shine so brightly, you’d think it was a new and glorious morn after all.

Sunlight over the Alps in Maloja, Switzerland

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Copyright © 2025 LaDonna Witmer • {all photos by author}