# This Little Light of Mine:

### Addena’s December Newsletter

[Addena Sumter-Freitag](https://substack.com/@addena)

Jan 01, 2026

Welcome, welcome, welcome Everyone!

I’m so happy you chose to come here to spend time a minute or two with me by reading This Little Light of Mine, and we can wave out the Old Year and toast to the New Year.

This Newsletter is just meant for Holiday Cheer. No Politics …No Poetry.

🎉🎉 2026! It’s hard to believe ! Just saying it’s 2026 sounds surreal, but it is literally here at our doorstep.

We got to celebrate some of our favourite holidays this month: Hanukkah, Christmas, and Kwanzaa. How can you pack in so much good stuff you wonder? Easy.

Seriously though, I am hoping that you all found Joy throughout the holidays and got to spend some of them with people you like …as well as people you love. I’m laughing, because (as we know), sometimes those are two things can be completely different.

Although I didn’t write about Kwanzaa this year, which I usually do, I still took the time and opportunity to reflect on the seven principles of Kwanza, and I purposely took time to appreciate my family, my relatives and my friends and tried to consciously realize and understand how valuable they all are to me.

We are normally in Jamaica for the months of December, January, and February. We have been going each year since 1990, (35 years!,) but this year Hurricane Melissa and the damage and havoc it wrecked changed all those plans.

We had to cancel our trip, for so many reasons, the first one being no flights were flying in with WestJet at that time, there was no water or current, and people were in full crisis mode. We decided the best way to help our friends would be to do what we can to help them from here instead of wasting our resources going there to stay in the immediate aftermath of the hurricane and its damage.

So Christmas here in Canada …no Palm Trees, no Caribbean Sea, no warm Sea breezes at night, no Reggae music wafting through the air, along with the music in the Patois voices like we experience in Jamaica. We miss you at Christmas and New .years Jamaica , and we especially miss all our Jamaican Friends. Here is a collection of great times and special locations (some duplicates) ♥️♥️🌴🌴🌴

Driving back from Vancouver to Kelowna, (in freezing temperatures after a snow fall) I was wring on Facebook the accounting of our harrowing journey.

_Driving from Vancouver we’re up in the mountains lots of snow and slush and ice Even yhe waterfalls froze! 😱_

2025 was quite a year. We lost quite a few friends. Sadly, some passed away, and a few just drifted away .. mainly due to political differences that made our friendship irreparable. Yes, (shockingly) it came to light they were Trump and (racist) MAGA and ICE tactic and policy supporters. It was devastating to learn that, because we have known a few of them for over 25 years of vacationing at the same time in Jamaica.

The good thing about 2025, and some of our friendships, is that they got even deeper and more precious this year. We had one longtime friend do some very nice things for us. And when I thanked them and told them how much we appreciate them and what they did, she said it is because we do so much to help other people.

See!… What goes around comes around. I am grateful for all our blessings, especially our friends:

# Happy New Year Everyone! 🎉🎉

# One Love

# Addena

# ♥️♥️🇨🇦🇨🇦♥️♥️🇯🇲🇯🇲🇯🇲