Tis the season: A time of twinkle, tumult, and tenderness

’Tis the season…

The phrase rolls off our tongues this time of year, conjuring images of lights draped over rooftops, storefronts glowing warm against the cold, and calendars filled with gatherings, concerts, office socials, and family traditions. There’s a hum in the air; a buzz of anticipation that seems to settle each November and rises steadily until Christmas Day. It isn’t necessarily a religious excitement, though for many it is. Rather, it has become a cultural season: a time when family plans expand, workplace schedules are rolled, communities lean into celebration, and a wide, hopeful energy stretches across even the darkest days.

We would be mistaken to believe this season feels the same for everyone.

For some, the decorations go up easily. For others, each string of lights can feel like a reminder of what isn’t there, or what has been lost, or what cannot be afforded. Beneath the glitter and the sentimentality lies a truth we often shy away from: this is also the season when loneliness grows sharpest, when financial strain tightens its grip, and when the gap between those who have plenty and those who have very little becomes painfully visible.

Newcomers: international students, temporary workers, permanent residents, and longtime immigrants often feel this divide deeply. Many have families oceans away. December, with all its messages about gathering, togetherness, and tradition, can amplify the ache of distance. The season urges them to “go home,” even when home means a place they cannot return to this year, or perhaps for many years. Their celebrations may be quiet, improvised, or solitary, and while joy can certainly be found in these new traditions, the longing never disappears entirely.

After thirty years in education, I’ve seen the emotional landscape of the season through the eyes of children: wide, honest, unfiltered. Kids who have much often speak with an effortless certainty: the newest phone, the latest game console, the branded hoodie everyone seems to want. They count down to what they will receive because, for them, receiving is guaranteed. Their excitement is genuine, but so too is their innocence about what the season looks like in other homes.

Then there are the children who know the nothingness that’s coming. Not because they are ungrateful, and certainly not because they’ve done anything wrong, but because home is financially strained, or emotionally fractured. December becomes a month of quiet calculation: listening to classmates compare wish lists, avoiding conversations about gifts, or holiday trips, hoping the school concert costume doesn’t cost money their parents don’t have.

Yet, these children cling to hope with a strength most adults would struggle to muster.

What has always struck me is their resilience. The child who knows there will be no presents still shows up excited for the classroom art project. The teenager whose home life is turbulent still finds a moment of joy in a school lunch with friends. In hallways where some kids talk about piles of gifts, others talk about the one thing they truly want: peace, stability, a little magic, just for a day.

It is this duality; the glow of celebration and the shadows cast behind it, that defines the modern Christmas season. It calls us, gently but urgently, to widen our perspective.

’Tis the season… to notice more.

To see the neighbour who lives alone and hasn’t had a visitor in weeks. To think of the newcomer who can’t translate holiday traditions into a life they are still learning to navigate. To remember the single parent doing mental math in a grocery aisle. To recognize the child who will look longingly at the class gift exchange and pretend it doesn’t bother them.

This does not require grand gestures. Often, the most meaningful acts are the smallest: an invitation, a shared meal, a ride to a local event, a donated gift, a moment of patient listening.

The lights we hang on our homes are symbolic; they illuminate the dark. But their purpose shouldn’t end at the edge of our rooftops. We can choose to be the light for someone else, even briefly. We can stretch the warmth of the season just a little further outward, toward those who need it most.

‘Tis the season, yes. For joy. For gathering. For celebration, but also for compassion, for awareness, and for remembering that not every twinkling light is bright enough to reach every home.

Sometimes, we must carry the light to them.