It’s that time of year again.
Lights on rooftops, wreaths on doors, strangers holding doors open like it’s second nature. For a few short weeks, the air itself feels different—gentler, forgiving, even kind. You see it everywhere: love, peace, joy—printed on cards, painted on windows, spoken in greetings from people who don’t say much the rest of the year.
And I always wonder—why just now?
Why only in December?
Why not in March, when the sky’s still gray and people snap at each other in grocery lines? Why not in June, when everyone’s too busy to slow down? Why does something that feels so natural—so right—disappear the moment the tree comes down?
Maybe because it’s easier to love when everyone else is doing it. Easier to feel peace when the world tells you to. Easier to find joy when the music and lights remind you how.
But when the decorations fade, the noise quiets, and life settles back into its usual rhythm—that’s when the truth shows up. That’s when we see whether love, peace, and joy were just ornaments or something deeper.
When I was a kid, I thought love meant giving gifts.
My father would come home with a paper bag full of surprises for my mother—her favorite chocolates, a candle, a new scarf. He wasn’t a man of many words, but his actions carried weight. I didn’t understand it then, but he was teaching me something simple: love doesn’t always need to be spoken. It just needs to be shown.
Years later, after he passed, I found myself doing the same thing without thinking—leaving small notes for people I cared about, sending a text just to check in, buying a coffee for a friend having a rough day. Little things, quiet things.
Love, I realized, isn’t a holiday event. It’s a rhythm.
A way of being.
It’s not found in the grand gestures but in the small consistencies that keep us human. It’s in how we listen. How we forgive. How we show up.
Peace, though—that one took me longer.
I used to think peace was something you earned by fixing everything. Resolve every problem, tie every loose end, make everyone happy—and then, maybe, you could rest.
But peace doesn’t work that way.
It doesn’t come when everything’s calm. It comes when you make peace with the storm.
I learned that during a stretch of hard years—divorce, unemployment, a silence that hung heavy in the house. I tried everything to outrun it. New routines. New plans. But the noise inside didn’t stop until I stopped chasing quiet.
It happened one evening in winter. I was sitting at the table, half-eaten dinner cold in front of me, when I finally just breathed. Not deep or forced—just a simple breath. And for a few seconds, there was no past or future. Just now.
It wasn’t joy. It wasn’t relief. It was peace.
And once you feel that, even for a moment, you never forget it.
Then there’s joy. The most misunderstood of the three.
We think joy means happiness. Smiles. Laughter.
But joy runs deeper than that. It’s what stays after happiness burns off.
Joy doesn’t shout. It hums quietly beneath the noise, steady and faithful.
It’s the feeling you get when your child laughs in another room. When the morning sun hits the floor just right. When you do something kind for someone who can’t repay you.
You can’t chase joy. It shows up when you stop trying to earn it.
When I read Scripture now, I understand what it means when it says the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, and peace.
They’re not rewards—they’re results.
They grow naturally when you’re rooted in something deeper than yourself.
Love that asks nothing in return.
Peace that holds steady in the chaos.
Joy that lives quietly, even in sorrow.
They’re not decorations to hang up in December. They’re seeds meant to be planted, tended, lived.
But I’ll be honest: some days I forget.
Some days I’m tired, impatient, too caught up in what’s missing to see what’s right in front of me. I’ll find myself waiting for the season again—as if love, peace, and joy were something that had to return on schedule.
That’s when I know I’ve drifted.
Because the truth is, the same light that glows in December doesn’t disappear in January. It’s just harder to see when life gets ordinary again.
📚 All of my stories began on Substack. Now, The Quiet Miracle and Earned, Not Given are here — new releases, available now on Amazon. ✨
I remember once—years ago—watching my son open presents on Christmas morning. The look on his face was pure wonder. He didn’t care about the wrapping or the cost or what came next. He was just there. Fully alive in that moment.
That’s what joy looks like when it’s real.
But I also remember a different morning, months later. The house was quiet. The tree long gone. He was sitting at the table, eating cereal before school, half-asleep. And for a second, he looked up, smiled, and said, “Thanks, Dad.”
No reason. No holiday. Just that.
And I realized—joy hadn’t left. It had simply changed shape.
Love, peace, and joy aren’t seasonal visitors. They’re constant companions waiting to be noticed.
They’re in the way you hold a door open for a stranger.
In the way you forgive someone who doesn’t deserve it.
In the moment you choose to listen instead of argue.
They’re not feelings to chase—they’re choices we make, every day.
And like anything real, they take work.
There’s a story I once heard about a monk who was asked what enlightenment felt like. He said, “Before enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water. After enlightenment, I chopped wood and carried water.”
Love, peace, and joy are like that.
They don’t change what you do—they change how you do it.
You still work, still worry, still face loss and heartache. But you move through it differently. There’s a calm behind the motion, a knowing that whatever happens, something inside remains steady.
I think about this a lot when I see people rushing through stores this time of year—carts piled high, tempers short, everyone chasing the feeling they think they’re supposed to have.
We buy candles that say Peace. We hang signs that say Joy. We wrap gifts to say Love.
And for a while, it works. The house feels warmer. The air feels softer. We smile more, hug more, forgive more.
But when it’s all over, we pack those words away with the ornaments—like they only belong to a certain season.
What if we didn’t?
What if we left them out all year, written not on our walls but in the way we live?
Here’s what I know now:
Love is not a feeling. It’s an action.
Peace is not a condition. It’s a surrender.
Joy is not a reaction. It’s a choice.
And none of them depend on circumstance.
Love happens when you show up for someone even when you’re tired.
Peace happens when you breathe through the noise instead of adding to it.
Joy happens when you stop waiting for a reason to smile.
They don’t require perfection. Just presence.
A few nights ago, I walked through town. The air was cold and the lights were already up—strings of white across storefronts, wreaths on lampposts, soft music playing through outdoor speakers.
And I thought, this is what it should feel like all the time. Not the decorations, but the quiet sense that we belong to something larger. That kindness still matters. That people still look up from their phones long enough to see each other.
I passed a man sitting on the curb, an old coat wrapped tight around him. His eyes met mine, and I nodded. He nodded back. Nothing more. But in that moment, something unspoken passed between us.
It wasn’t pity. It wasn’t charity. It was connection.
And that—simple, wordless, human—was love, peace, and joy all at once.
When the holidays end and the lights dim, that’s the moment to start living the message we decorate our homes with.
To make love a verb.
To let peace begin with one small breath.
To carry joy quietly, even when no one’s watching.
Maybe then we wouldn’t need a season to remind us who we already are.
Maybe then love, peace, and joy wouldn’t just be words on cards—
but the way we move through the world.
So this year, when the music fades and the calendar turns, I’ll try to keep them close.
I’ll start small.
A call to someone who’s alone.
A walk outside without rushing.
A prayer whispered before sleep—not asking for anything, just saying thank you.
Because love, peace, and joy aren’t found in what we receive.
They’re revealed in what we give.
And if we live them—not just once a year, but every day—
maybe the world will start to glow again.
Not because it’s Christmas.
But because we remembered what it means to be alive..
- Rinaldo
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What began as daily reflections on Substack has grown into full books. You can now find them on Amazon, Remi’s Journey, Rediscovering Vancouver, and Dancing Letters.
Inspiration for This Story.
This story was inspired by the quiet question that comes every December: why do love, peace, and joy seem to appear only once a year? Watching the world soften under twinkling lights, I wondered why we let that warmth fade when the season ends. The piece grew from that thought—a reflection on how these virtues aren’t seasonal gifts but daily choices. It’s about slowing down, breathing through the noise, and carrying the spirit of the holidays into the ordinary days that follow, when the lights are gone but the heart still has room to shine.
—John Rinaldo
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Love as a rhythm, not a season, is the line that stayed with me. The reminder that peace is quiet and joy is earned through presence, not performance, feels real. This is the kind of writing that asks you to slow down and actually live what you say you believe.🤍🤗
This is beautiful John, thank you for expressing and sharing🤍