If you feel like joy is elusive this holiday season, you’re not alone.
2025 has been an especially punishing year across the planet, the nation and for Los Angeles in particular. In the past 12 months, we’ve witnessed homes destroyed by fire, families broken up by ICE, skyrocketing anti-trans hate and massive layoffs across the entertainment and media industries leaving thousands in our city unemployed.
It’s enough to plunge even L.A.’s sunniest optimists into despair.
“It’s hard to be happy in this world where people are being treated terribly,” a friend said to me recently. “This is a time to be serious, take notice and take action.”
I understand where she’s coming from, but without moments of joy to fill my cup, I feel depleted and useless. When I actively seek joy by jumping around at my synagogue, dancing to Abba at my Italian social club or pausing to appreciate the warm glow of a winter sunset, I am better able to meet whatever challenges are awaiting me.
The American Psychological Association defines joy as “a feeling of extreme gladness, delight or exultation of the spirit arising from a sense of well-being and satisfaction.” While joy has not received the same attention from research psychologists as the more toned down emotion of happiness, there is evidence that joy can lead to increased creativity and greater psychological resilience.
It is also an emotion that does not need to be tied to our external experiences.
“Some people think all the conditions need to be right to experience joy — I have to be feeling OK, I have to like my family, I have to have not just lost someone,” said Rabbi Susan Goldberg, founder of Nefesh, a Jewish community in Echo Park. “That’s not true. It’s a choice, and it’s a practice.”
I spoke with Goldberg and other faith leaders in L.A. about how we can seek and practice joy this season, whether or not you’re religious.
Reframe Joy
It may feel insensitive or selfish to seek joy when we know so many are hurting, but Thema Bryant, a psychologist and minister at First AME Church in Los Angeles, doesn’t see it that way.
“We can feel more than one thing at the same time,” she said. “And it is healthy to give ourselves space and permission to feel all the things that come up for us at this time of year.”
This holiday season, many of us have good reason to feel grief, fear, anger and disappointment. At the same time, we can still enjoy gathering with family or friends, eating our favorite holiday foods or attending a candlelight service on Christmas Eve.
None of this means we are ignoring or dismissing our own pain or the pain of those around us. Bryant said choosing despair as an act of solidarity doesn’t help people who are suffering. And allowing ourselves to experience joy in the midst of struggle can also be an act of liberation.
“The purpose of oppression, hatred and discrimination is to disconnect us and dehumanize us,” she said. “It is an act of resistance to say, ‘I’m not going to give all my peace to those who are working to stress me out.’”
Purposefully include joy in your routine
So what does seeking joy in the midst of anguish look like?
At Nefesh, where I am a member, it looks like jumping.
The Nefesh community has experienced plenty of pain this year. Several members were directly affected by the fires that tore through Los Angeles at the beginning of 2025, queer and trans members have considered leaving the country in the wake of increasing hate and those with ties to Israel have grappled with the devastation and violence in that region. Clergy and congregants have also been on the front lines of the fight to keep families from being separated by ICE, and this spring the community was shocked by the unexpected death of Goldberg’s mother, a beloved member, parent educator and activist.
And yet despite all this, each week Goldberg stands in front of the congregation and literally jumps for joy as we welcome Shabbat.
“Our tradition says it’s six to one,” she said. “Six days a week of making, fixing, doing, and Shabbat is the seventh day when we are literally commanded to rest and also be joyful. You can think about the centuries where it seemed impossible for the Jewish people to have joy and delight, and yet that is what we have found.”
Look for ‘glimmers’
If religious community is not your thing, Bryant has a few other ideas on how to seek joy in challenging times. “The term that comes to mind for me are ‘glimmers instead of triggers,’” she said.
If “triggers” are reminders of painful moments, “glimmers” are a simple pleasure that can trigger joy and help invite it into our lives, she said. That might mean taking a walk, going to the beach, calling a friend who always makes you smile, relaxing in a bubble bath or rewatching a favorite movie.
“Community can bring joy,” Bryant said. “Or cuddling with your pet. Service and volunteerism can also be a joy.”
I recently saw a “glimmer” in action when a friend sent me an adorable video of her daughter as a little girl. My friend had had just rewatched the video on her phone after spending eight hours at the hospital with her father-in-law who was in the midst of a frightening health event.
“It’s a ridiculous disaster,” she texted me. But even in the midst of the crisis, she was able to experience a glimmer of joy by reliving this sweet moment with her daughter.
“Joy, joy, joy,” she wrote. “Wherever we can find it.”
But don’t shut out the darkness
Authentic joy can also look like human connection and solidarity, said Francisco Garcia, an Episcopal priest who co-leads the Sacred Resistance ministry of the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and who has ministered to many people whose loved ones have been taken by ICE.
“There’s an element of knowing we’re not alone in our pain, fear and anxiety that can be a source of some semblance of joy,” Garcia said. “Finding those sources of daily gratitude that are not fake or forced, but born out of real strife and struggle, is a beautifully human thing.”
As we enter the Christmas season, Garcia noted that the Christmas liturgy is an annual reminder that joy is possible even in the darkest times, and that the two often go together. He pointed to the practice of Advent, a time when observant Christians prepare themselves for the arrival of the son of God.
“The light and the darkness are part of the celebration,” he said.
It reminded him of a line from Psalm 30:5: “Weeping may endure for the night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
“It’s a hope that joy will come, not a guarantee,” Garcia said. “And that itself is a leap of faith. That joy will come in the morning.”
This story originally appeared on LA Times
