GOOD LIGHT
- Libby K. Hanaway
- Dec 20, 2025
- 6 min read
Updated: Feb 16
Last week was a dark one in the news — Bondi Beach, Brown University, Rob Reiner and Michele Singer Reiner. It was a bit darker on a more personal scale, too: Rick and I were back in Chicago for a memorial service on Monday, seeing the face of grief on our family friends up close. Several in my circle are managing this first holiday season without a loved one, and I know from experience that old grief rears back up this time of year.
Today — December 19 — we are also in the stretch of near-peak daytime darkness, with headlights and porch lights blinking on by 4:30 pm each afternoon. And currently here in northern Colorado, we’re at the start of today’s unsettling wind storm; nerves are rattled in our area with the ever-present memory of the 2021 wind-fueled Marshall Fire that required over 1,000 households in our neighboring towns to rebuild their lives from scratch — walls, rooftops, family photos, wedding rings, birth certificates … everything you could imagine. School’s been cancelled today and our area’s power and light feels more tenuous with each dusty, wooshing gust from the west. [UPDATE on 12/20/2025: the wind was terrible and damaging in many nearby areas, but all's okay with us 💡.]
Something about me: I care A LOT about light — layers of light, the color temperature of light, the overall mood of light, and more. When we moved into our new-build home four years ago, every single recessed ceiling lightbulb was a cool, clinical 5000K, which was surely helpful for the electricians and carpenters doing their detailed work but made our entire house feel like an open-concept hospital operating room. I could not. Rick actually could, but he knows me well, and on our very first night under this roof — with moving boxes and piles of household miscellanea covering every surface — he went to Home Depot to buy 30+ large LED bulbs at a more humane 2700K. Oh hallelujah, I could BREATHE!
Overhead lighting is just the start. When we settle down at night to watch a movie, my family knows I’ll jump up from the couch 1-3 times to turn down the kitchen lights behind us, click on or off nearby table lamps, and light up our coffee table glassybabies, described in this Extra Good link here. Only when all the lighting is mellowed and glowing can I settle back into the couch for comfort. And speaking of movie nights and light, back in the day, Tangled was on repeat with the girls; this is an adorable, light-hearted computer-animated Disney musical, but no matter: as soon as the floating lantern scene lit up the screen (see below), tears were always rolling down my face. Were I to ever see the actual Loy Krathong or Yi Peng festivals in Thailand, I think I might just pass out from the glorious overwhelm.
All of this to say, I am very, very into light, and it extends beyond kitchen ceilings and movie scenes. Light sets a mood, brings comfort, and sparks hope.
In December, the dark thickly blankets our surroundings. But in this deep, wide darkness, light is ready to punch through and shine like bright stars in the inky night sky. We have tools and traditions at the ready: flashlights, headlamps, headlights, lightbulbs, lanterns, streetlights, fire pits, blue-wave phone light, candlelight, solar-powered light, porch string lights, dinosaur nightlights, twinkling Christmas lights (the less-risky evolution of live candles on evergreen trees), Advent wreaths, and the flickering menorah candlelight of Hanukkah, also known as the Festival of Lights. Our lighting tools even extend to health and wellbeing. There is a good reason light therapy boxes for Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) are called Happy Lamps: science has produced solid evidence that Bright Light Therapy (BLT of a different kind) actually is an accessible, effective remedy for seasonal mood disorders and the general winter blues. Sound intriguing? You can pick up a bright-light therapy lamp at your next Costco run!
In the dark winter months, I hunt for light the way moths flock to porch lights on summer nights. December makes this easy. There’s a dental office on a main street in town that I find enchanting. Seriously, well done, Complete Family & Aesthetic Dentistry 🤩:
And our great local bookstore — The Read Queen — which is around the corner from the dental office — also lights it up right:
I might take a minute to look for light in our wedding album, too. Rick and I were married December 22, 1990, exactly thirty-five years ago this Monday in a freezing Chicago-area ice storm. Not a wedding date I'd recommend to anyone (shout-out to any readers who stopped all holiday preparations to drive on skating-rink roads to be a part of our night; you are the real ones), but it all worked out in the long run! The ceremony started at 4:30 p.m., and it was already pitch-black outside. The candles were a cozy consolation for the weather: fire + ice, indeed. I promise this will be the only PDA pic I'll ever subject you to:
And in our own house, not a night goes by when I’m not clicking the flame clicker for some extra flickering cheer:
One of the most powerful forms of light I've experienced came from an annual service on or close to Winter Solstice at our Presbyterian church in the Seattle area … and also in churches and faith communities worldwide. It’s sometimes called a Blue Christmas service, but I’ve always known it as The Longest Night. In December’s four-week stretch of goofy reindeer antler-headbands, jingly Christmas tunes, and rabid White Elephant gift exchanges, The Longest Night services acknowledge the amplified loneliness, grief, loss, and melancholy that can seep into the season. In the years following my mom’s Christmastime death, I took great comfort in this service, with its contemplative spirit, its quiet music, its beautiful candlelight. My brother is a Presbyterian pastor, so I know the seasonal demands of church life pretty well, and I remain very touched that faith communities near and far make space in their wildly busy ramp-up to Christmas Eve for this quiet pause to bring light and solace to anyone in need.
So currently it’s all dark, dark, dark, but there’s hope ahead! The Winter Solstice, occurring each year on December 21, marks the (very gradual) end of seasonal darkness and the (very gradual) return of seasonal light. It’s been celebrated worldwide — in many different forms — throughout human history and well into today Peaceful Yuzu fruit baths for humans and cabybaras (separately, btw) in Japan! Sunlight at Stonehendge! Dancing in Peru! In every language and in every custom, it’s “Goodbye, darkness / Hello again, light! Let’s have a party!”
The light is coming, it is coming!
At Monday’s memorial service for our family friend, a large photograph of R. stood at the front of the church sanctuary and also graced the cover of the paper program. In the photo, she was seated at a cozily-lit restaurant table, smiling brightly (as she did), celebrating life (as she did), living abundantly (as she did), probably ready to toast with a very fine wine to something fun (as she did). Her face glowed — even radiated — with light and warmth. Does this beautiful luminosity cut through her family's deep grief? For now, unlikely. But I sense the light and warmth of her smiling face is exactly what she'd like to still send out into the world.
My takeaway from a week laced with some extra darkness?
Look for the light — and be a light — whenever humanly possible
✨
EXTRA GOOD
ALSO LINKED THROUGH THE EXTRA GOOD PAGE HERE
FRIDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2025
1._GOOD NEWS: Shining brightly from nearby Flagstaff Mountain, the Boulder Star has been a festive holiday-and-more fixture since 1947:
Photo from AboutBoulder.com
Here's a short public radio story of how — thanks to one local electrician — a young resident was able to turn his grief into productive purpose when tapped to help with the Boulder Star's annual lighting. The story has been transcribed for reading, but give it a listen (via blue button at top of page) if you can!
2._GOOD ENTERTAINMENT: With the loss of celebrated director Rob Reiner last week, many film fans have been returning to his movies for comfort and remembrance. So many of his films became icons in their widely-distinctive genres: the perfection of Billy Crystal and Meg Ryan's cranky New York City chemistry in When Harry Met Sally; the weird hilarity of This is Spinal Tap; the cult-quotability of The Princess Bride; the bittersweet nostalgia of Stand By Me; and more. This Rolling Stone piece, published earlier this week, highlights eight "essential" Rob Reiner films. What an incredible talent. We will probably start with When Harry Met Sally first. One of my favorite lines from Marie to Sally: "Someone is staring at you in Personal Growth."
3._MORE GOOD ENTERTAINMENT: Looking for a little extra burst of light? And maybe Mandy Moore's warm voice, a budding love scene on a boat, and a doe-eyed chameleon for extra emotional oomph? Mentioned above, this tear-triggering scene (for some) from Tangled is a vision of computer-animated luminescence!
SEE YOU HERE NEXT TIME FOR ANOTHER BATCH OF GOOD
😀
Happy anniversary you two!
And thank you (?!) for introducing us to monster cookies last week!! 😋