A Soft Serve 2025 Hanusol Essay Contest for Psychiatrists and Psychiatry

PSYCHIATRIC VIEWS ON THE DAILY NEWS

Toward the end of 2024, my colleague James L. Fleming, MD, and I set up an essay contest about how Chrismukkah, that year’s calendar confluence of Hanukkah and Christmas, might have significance for world peace. The contest was described in the column “A Chrismukkah Essay Contest for Psychiatrists,” posted on January 3, 2025.

Then, about a year later, the day before Hanukah was set to begin at the end of 2025, I was startled when I was somehow reminded of the prior essay contest. Not only that, but I realized there was another, but different, confluence. Alone this time, I quickly set up another contest title:

“The Significance of the Confluence of Hanukkah and the Winter Solstice for World Peace.”

As the contest moved on, the combined name of Hanusol seemed to correspond to Chrismukkah.

Over 2025, there had been some progress toward greater world peace as represented by the ceasefire in Gaza. However, no peace was emerging yet from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the devastation and undercovered civil was in Sudan, now our invasion of Venezuela, and other conflicts.

You might imagine, then, how devastatingly eerie I felt when the news emerged of a mass shooting in Australia at a beach Hanukah party, only about 12 hours after I sent out the notice about the contest.

Although I mistakenly only mentioned the winter solstice, December 21 is either a transition into increased light, as for the United States, or toward increased darkness, as in Australia. In all our lives and that of patients, there are many transitions from mental darkness to light and vice versa, although it seems like humans potentially learn more from failures than success. In the historic Hanukkah, a 7-year battle came out of oppression and assimilation of Jews, culminating with temporary peace and the restored temple with the oil for the candle burning miraculously for 8 days instead of 1.

In all transitions of light and darkness, there seems to be a time with gradual merging and separation of the sunrise and sunset, sunny days and cloudy days, blinding light and pitch black, artificial light and turned-off lights, hidden light amidst darkness, inspiration and gloominess, or fireworks tonight.

In the Jewish mystical Kabbalistic teaching, Divine Light is thought to be the very essence of God. Sometimes it seems hidden. Yet, all this is not to conclude that light is always better than darkness. After all, it seems that more babies were conceived and born at night! Or that both perceived good and bad can occur in light or the darkness. Love and hate; dreams and nightmares. In “Star Wars,” the balance of light and darkness in The Force is sought. Given our natural fears of the night, such as impaired vision of danger and the need to sleep, it is easy to project the negative onto the night.

Somehow, the metaphor of merging chocolate and vanilla flavors into soft serve ice cream seemed to me to fit. The darkness of chocolate and whiteness of vanilla can both be delicious, although one or the other might be one’s favorite. They can be stirred together in many combinations, just like our skin colors. If not enjoyed carefully, they can also make a dripping mess, as I usually do.

I was curious how our contest submissions would address the light and darkness represented by the solstice and Hanukkah confluence. And that is exactly what they did, so well that we have cowinners, to be announced in our next column. Stay tuned!

Dr Moffic is an award-winning psychiatrist who specialized in the cultural and ethical aspects of psychiatry and is now in retirement and retirement as a private pro bono community psychiatrist. A prolific writer and speaker, he has done a weekday column titled “Psychiatric Views on the Daily News” and a weekly video, “Psychiatry & Society,” since the COVID-19 pandemic emerged. He was chosen to receive the 2024 Abraham Halpern Humanitarian Award from the American Association for Social Psychiatry. Previously, he received the Administrative Award in 2016 from the American Psychiatric Association, the one-time designation of being a Hero of Public Psychiatry from the Speaker of the Assembly of the APA in 2002, and the Exemplary Psychiatrist Award from the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill in 1991. He presented the third Rabbi Jeffrey B. Stiffman lecture at Congregation Shaare Emeth in St. Louis on Sunday, May 19, 2024. He is an advocate and activist for mental health issues related to climate instability, physician burnout, and xenophobia. He is now editing the final book in a 4-volume series on religions and psychiatry for Springer: Islamophobia, anti-Semitism, Christianity, and now The Eastern Religions, and Spirituality. He serves on the Editorial Board of Psychiatric Times.