What do you do to brighten the short days and long nights?

We’re in the dark days of the year, in the literal sense. The lights have to go on while I’m still working and the walk home after school happens in the darkness and the artificial light. In truth, I like winter—the weather and in a lot of ways the darkness create a sense of coziness. Snow falling through the glow of streetlights make me very happy (when it snows at all these days). It’s the season of the only holidays I celebrate with any level of commitment. It’s not hard to understand, though, why we have holidays celebrating light and life and the lifting of darkness in this time of year.

In 2020, in the added darkness and isolation of the pre-vaccination pandemic (a state of being that persists for too many disabled and immunocompromised people), looking at a Christmas without most of the people who usually make it lovely, I went looking for ways to create little bright spots.

Here’s what I came up with. I’m curious what you might have done under similar circumstances.