A mid-December reflection on the quiet beauty of winter, childhood wonder, and the awe of light breaking into stillness. A gentle, spiritually grounded invitation to pause and let this season illuminate your heart.

When Light Illuminates

There is something unmistakably tender about this stretch of December—these shortest days of the year when night settles early and the world grows quieter without asking our permission. The rush of the season may whirl around us, but winter itself speaks in a softer voice. It invites us to pause. To breathe. To notice what we might otherwise overlook.

Katherine May, in her gentle book Wintering, describes winter as a season that urges us inward, toward rest and reflection, and toward the kind of inner tending that busy seasons often push aside. Her lens is not bleak, but honest—an acknowledgment that the quiet months have a gift of their own. A different kind of clarity. A different kind of light.

And I find myself remembering a moment from childhood that has never left me.

I grew up in a northern rural place where winter arrived with complete sincerity. Snow blanketed everything—roofs, fields, trees, fence posts—until the land below my second-story bedroom window was transformed into something otherworldly. I would press my palms against the cool glass at night and look out over a landscape washed in moonlight. The snow glowed, almost shimmered, as though the stars themselves had fallen to earth and scattered their radiance across our yard.

There was no sound.
No hurry.
No expectation.

Only quiet beauty.
A quiet joy.
A stillness that somehow felt alive.

Even at that young age, before I had the words for such things, I knew this was a moment worth holding. No commercial celebration could compare to it. There was wonder in that silent, shimmering scene—a hope I could feel in my chest, a peace as sure as breath.

That childhood memory returns to me every December, especially when I think about another quiet night long ago—when shepherds kept watch over their flocks under a similar sky. I imagine them standing in their own stretch of stillness, perhaps fighting sleep, perhaps whispering to pass the time, never expecting anything extraordinary. The world was quiet. Ordinary. Familiar.

And then—light.
Not the gentle glow of moon on snow, but a brilliance so sudden and full that it must have stopped the breath in their lungs. Beauty and glory shining all around them. A moment of awe so profound it changed everything.

Sometimes I wonder what I would do if I were there—if I could time travel to that night and witness it myself. I imagine falling to my knees, overwhelmed by the magnitude of it. Not out of fear, but out of the kind of wonder that only comes when something sacred breaks through the ordinary.

Both scenes—my childhood window and that sacred hillside—carry the same essence:
stillness, quiet, expectation you can feel but not name, and a light that reveals more than it demands.

A light that illuminates.

And perhaps that is winter’s invitation to us—even now.
Not to accomplish more or make the season perfect, but simply to pause long enough to notice the subtle ways light still breaks into our days. The glow of a candle on a table. The hush of an early evening. A steady presence in the midst of busyness. A quiet moment that feels like peace.

Winter does not ask for much.
It simply offers a chance to look again, more gently, more slowly, until the ordinary becomes luminous.

So may this week, in all its rush and rhythm, hold for you even one small moment of illumination—where wonder returns, where stillness opens, and where light finds you exactly where you are.

-laura