Burns Night, Midwinter, and the Work of Holding On

 

There is something about this time of year.

The holidays are over. The lights are packed away. The weather presses in—cold, dark, unyielding. The world feels heavy right now, in ways both personal and political. It’s a season that invites turning inward, even when you know you shouldn’t linger there too long.

Last night was Burns Night, something I’ve marked for nearly thirty years. It isn’t about pageantry or performance for me anymore. It’s about pause and about gathering. And it's about remembering who we are when things feel fragile.

So I cooked. Roast beef. Rolls. A few vegetable sides. Sticky toffee pudding. Nothing fancy—just food meant to anchor you. We sat around the table as a family and talked the way people do when the house is warm, and the world outside feels sharp.

We reminisced. We remembered the people we’ve lost in recent years. We talked about the state of the country—how hard it feels, how brittle, how angry. We talked about democracy and how easily it frays when people stop believing in one another. And inevitably, we talked about public education—how it carries democracy forward not through slogans, but through children learning, together, every day.

Burns has always lived in that tension. His poetry holds joy and grief in the same stanza. Love and injustice. Belonging and exile. He understood something we often forget: that tenderness and resistance are not opposites. They need each other.

After everyone went to bed, I poured a small dram of my favorite single malt Scotch. I don’t really drink anymore. But last night felt… appropriate. A ritual, not an escape. A way of marking time, of honoring continuity in a moment that feels unmoored.

Burns Night does that to me. It turns me inward—but not toward despair. Toward memory. Toward gratitude. Toward the quiet work of staying human when the world is loud and cruel.

Midwinter is a hard season. And let's be honest, so is middle-age. There’s a letdown after Christmas, a loneliness that can settle in, especially for those of us who carry responsibility for others. Leadership, service, care—these things don’t pause just because the nights are long. Sometimes they feel heavier precisely because of it.

And yet, sitting at that table, remembering, I was reminded why these rituals matter. Why poetry matters. Why public education matters. Why democracy survives at all.

It survives in kitchens.
In classrooms.
In stories we tell our children.
In meals shared.
In remembering who we’ve lost and why we still show up.

Burns wrote for ordinary people. He believed their lives were worthy of beauty and attention. That belief feels especially important right now.

So yes, I turned inward last night. But not away. Inward, so I could return steadier. More grounded. More resolved to keep doing the work that matters—even when it’s cold, and dark, and difficult.

Midwinter does not last forever.
Neither does this moment.

But how we hold one another through it—that will.