I have noticed that prayer often helps with everything. It calms the mind and I feel better. I cope better in everyday life.
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This gloomy time is not easy for me. During the day, a short moment of gray outside and then dark again. Next, I’ll try to hobble through a “pointless hour-long walk” to boost my mental strength. On top of that, an intense sauna with a couple of ice-cold showers. That helps for a while.
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Back at the cottage again with my daughter to spend Christmas. I just lit the fire in the stove; a live fire is a wonderfully calming element. Soon I’ll start filling the hot tub. In freezing weather, I use an auger to drill a hole in the river ice and lower a borehole pump into the hole, which is a powerful piece of kit. The tub fills in under half an hour. Spending a couple of hours in the tub under the starry sky, alongside some sauna time, is perhaps a kind of meditation. The body relaxes in the warm water. You can watch moving dots in the sky, which are likely some satellites. Yesterday, I fried “Christmas crepes” on gas in the hut; alongside them, we roasted bacon on the embers, croutons for the salad, and I even tried “loimu” style (glow-frying) some pieces of smoked turkey. Last year, we were making food from leftovers and realized the crepe thing: a fresh large griddle crepe with bacon roasted crispy on the embers, fig jam, goat cheese, and salad. It was surprisingly good, at least to me. So we thought, let’s make Christmas crepes now since crepes are the best. They put me in a good mood 
These kinds of things would be harder to pull off in the city. The mind really gets refreshed at the cottage by the riverbank! Not everyone would like it since there’s an outhouse. For my daughter, though, there’s a Porta Potti chemical toilet.
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Personally, I like writing wish lists to Santa Claus.