How Can I Celebrate When the World Is Suffering?

Every December, the same question returns with the weight of ritual: How can I celebrate when the world is suffering? It arrives from clients, friends, and strangers who feel the dissonance between glowing lights and a grieving planet. The Guatemalan feminist thinker Lorena Cabnal offers a language for this tension through her idea of body territory, the understanding that our bodies are the first landscapes shaped by political decisions, inherited violence, and the long reach of colonial power. When the world hurts, we feel it in our flesh before we name it. So the holiday season does not simply ask us to wrap presents or smile for family photos. It asks us to carry the ache of seeing women targeted, communities displaced, and children harmed, all while pretending the calendar has delivered a moment of joy. In this gap between expectation and reality is where many of us live, searching for a way to hold both tenderness and truth.

Below are three practices inspired by this worldview that can support us through the holiday season. They are not meant to fix anything, but to help us notice the quiet negotiations our bodies make as we move through a season that demands cheer. They start with recognizing that the holiday table is never just a table. It is a place where histories gather beside us, where our pulse quickens before a relative speaks, and where joy and vigilance coexist in the same breath. Approaching the season with intention means trusting the small truths our bodies already carry: that celebration and sorrow are not opposites, that we can feel the world’s fractures and still seek moments of warmth, and that survival, especially for those who hold generational wounds, is its own kind of ceremony.

1. Joy is Resistance

Joy, in times like these, is rarely loud. It doesn’t sweep in to save us or cancel out what’s happening in the world. It arrives in smaller, steadier ways, often when we aren’t looking. Claiming joy is not about pretending everything is fine. It is about refusing to let oppression dictate the entire texture of our days. It is a quiet insistence that our body territory belongs to us, not to the forces that have tried to shape it through fear, violence, or exhaustion.

Joy is not ignorance. It is clarity. It is recognizing the world’s wounds and still allowing ourselves brief moments of relief, humor, or connection. It might show up in a conversation that finally feels honest, in a breath we didn’t realize we were holding, or in the unexpected ease of being with someone who does not require performance. These moments are not grand, but they matter. They remind us that our bodies remember more than pain; they remember possibility.

Choosing joy is not an escape from struggle. It is a refusal to collapse under it. It pushes back against the narrative that marginalized people must always be suffering in order to be taken seriously. In a season where we are pressured to manufacture happiness, real joy becomes a form of resistance. This is not the staged version. It is the kind that rises from our lived truths, belongs to us, and refuses to disappear.

2. Ancestral resilience is guidance

There are days when our individual strength feels thin, when the season’s emotional demands stretch us more than we admit. But within Cabnal’s understanding of body territory, we are never walking alone. Our bodies hold not only our wounds but the knowledge and resilience of those who came before us. Cabnal’s words carry this truth with clarity:

es maravilloso cómo se manifestó la resiliencia ancestral de los pueblos. En el pueblo Maya y Xinka, tú naces con una razón de existencia y aportas con tu tejido de conciencia en la Red de la Vida. Nosotros sabemos qué nos compete hoy, tenemos un llamado profundo de conciencia que nos hace traer la sabiduría de nuestras ancestralidades para enfrentar este momento

In English: It is wonderful how the ancestral resilience of the peoples manifested itself. In the Maya and Xinka communities, you are born with a reason for being and contribute your consciousness to the Web of Life. We know what is incumbent upon us today; we have a profound calling of conscience that compels us to draw upon the wisdom of our ancestors to face this moment.

Her words remind us that resilience is not an individual performance but a lineage. It is the quiet knowledge that our lives reach far beyond the narrow expectations of holiday gatherings or today’s headlines. Even when the world feels fractured, we are held by something older and steadier than any seasonal demand for cheer.

Moving through the holidays with this perspective means grounding ourselves not in obligation, but in truth. It is permission to pause, to listen inward, to remember that our body territory is part of a vast web that has endured centuries of rupture and still insists on life.

3. Releasing control creates room for honesty

The holiday season often amplifies our need for control. We plan, anticipate, and rehearse as if predicting every outcome will protect us from disappointment. Irvin Yalom wrote that this grasping for control is not about perfectionism; it is a defense against existential anxiety. Uncertainty unnerves us, so we reach for structure to steady ourselves. But the tighter we hold on, the more brittle we become.

Yalom became known for leading therapy groups where he intentionally refused to control the process. He allowed the group to unfold in all its unpredictability because he believed that control — even from a therapist — creates the illusion that relationships can be choreographed. When he stepped back, he made space for something truer: discomfort that didn’t destroy anyone, honesty that emerged unexpectedly, uncertainty that people discovered they could survive.

In the context of the holidays, this offers a different kind of guidance. We don’t need to script every moment to feel safe. Letting go of control can open room for clarity. When we stop rehearsing what we think we should say, we notice what we actually feel. When we stop trying to manage others’ reactions, we create space to show up with a little more softness and truth.

Letting go of control is not surrender. It is a choice to meet the season as it is rather than forcing it into a shape that was never meant to fit. And in that encounter — imperfect, unscripted, a little unsteady — we often find the connection and relief we were searching for all along.

Source: All quotes from Lorena Cabnal are translated from her interview published by Avispa Midia: “Tejernos en conciencia para sanar la vida.” Available at https://avispa.org/lorena-cabnal-tejernos-en-conciencia-para-sanar-la-vida/