If you're feeling like joy is elusive this holiday season, you're not alone.
2025 has become a particularly difficult year for the entire planet, the country, and Los Angeles in particular. Over the past 12 months, we have seen homes destroyed by fire, families broken up by ICE, anti-trans hatred soaring, and mass layoffs in the entertainment and media industries, leaving thousands of our city's residents unemployed.
It's enough to drive even the sunniest Los Angeles optimists to despair.
“It’s hard to be happy in this world where people are treated horribly,” a friend told me recently. “It’s time to get serious, pay attention and take action.”
I understand where she's coming from, but without moments of joy to fill my cup, I feel empty and worthless. When I actively seek joy by jumping around in synagogue and dancing to “Abba” in my Italian social club or stopping to appreciate the warm glow of a winter sunset will help me better cope with whatever challenges await me.
The American Psychological Association defines joy as “a feeling of extreme joy, delight, or elation of spirit arising from a sense of well-being and satisfaction.” Although joy has not received the same amount of attention from psychological researchers as the more muted emotion of happiness, there is proof this 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 experience.
“Some people think that in order to experience joy, all the conditions must be in place: I must feel good, I must like my family, I must not just lose someone,” said Rabbi Susan Goldberg, founder of Nefesh, a Jewish congregation 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 Los Angeles about how we can seek and practice joy this season, whether you're religious or not.
Redefine Joy
Seeking joy may seem insensitive or selfish when we know so many people are suffering, but Tema Bryant, a psychologist and minister at First AME Church in Los Angeles, doesn't think so.
“We can feel several things at once,” she said. “And it’s helpful to give ourselves space and permission to feel everything that happens to 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 meeting with family or friends, eating our favorite holiday foods, or attending a candlelight service on Christmas Eve.
None of this means that we ignore or ignore our own pain or the pain of those around us. Bryant said choosing despair as an act of solidarity does not help suffering people. And allowing yourself to experience joy in the midst of struggle can also be an act of liberation.
“The purpose of oppression, hatred and discrimination is to divide us and dehumanize us,” she said. “Saying, ‘I’m not going to give all my peace to those who are trying to stress me out,’ is an act of resistance.”
Incorporate joy into your daily routine on purpose.
So what does finding joy in the midst of suffering look like?
In Nefesh, of which I am a member, it is like a leap.
The Nefesh community has experienced a lot of pain this year. Several members were directly affected by the fires that ravaged Los Angeles in early 2025, gay and transgender people considered leaving the country due to growing hatred, and those with ties to Israel faced destruction and violence in the region. Clergy and parishioners have also been on the front lines of the fight to keep ICE from separating families, and this spring the community was shocked by an unexpected death Goldberg's motherbeloved participant, parent educator and activist.
And yet, despite all this, every week Goldberg stands in front of the congregation and literally jumps for joy as we welcome the Shabbat.
“Our tradition is six to one,” she said. “Six days a week dedicated to creating, repairing, doing, and Shabbat is the seventh day when we are literally commanded to rest and rejoice. You can think of those centuries when it seemed impossible for the Jewish people to experience joy and pleasure, and yet that is exactly what we found.”
Look for “shimmer”
If religious community isn't your thing, Bryant has some more ideas on how to find joy in difficult times. “The term that comes to mind is 'flicker instead of trigger,'” she said.
While “triggers” are reminders of painful moments, “glimpses” are simple pleasures that can spark joy and help invite it into our lives, she said. This might mean taking a walk, going to the beach, calling a friend who always makes you smile, relaxing in a bubble bath, or watching your favorite movie.
“Community can be a joy,” Bryant said. “Or cuddling with your pet. Serving and volunteering can be joyful too.”
I recently saw “flicker” in action when a friend sent me an adorable video of her daughter as a child. A friend of mine just watched a video on her phone after spending eight hours in the hospital with her father-in-law, who was in the middle of a frightening health event.
“This is a ridiculous disaster,” she wrote to 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 close the darkness
Authentic joy can also look like human connection and solidarity, said Francisco Garcia, an Episcopal priest who leads Sacred Resistance Ministries for the Episcopal Diocese of Los Angeles and who has ministered to many people whose loved ones have been kidnapped by ICE.
“There is an element of realizing that we are not alone in our pain, fear and anxiety, and that can be a source of some semblance of joy,” Garcia said. “Finding those sources of daily gratitude that are not false or forced, but born of real struggle and struggle, is a beautiful human endeavor.”
As we enter the Christmas season, Garcia noted that the Christmas liturgy is an annual reminder that joy is possible even in the darkest of times and that the two often go hand in hand. He pointed to the practice of Advent, the time when observant Christians prepare for the coming of the Son of God.
“Light and darkness are part of the holiday,” he said.
It reminded him of a line from Psalm 30:5: “There will be mourning for a night, but joy in the morning.”
“It’s a hope that joy will come, not a guarantee,” Garcia said. “And that in itself is a leap of faith. That joy will come in the morning.”
