As Christians around the world light the first candle on the Advent wreath, today’s post focuses on this season of hope by sharing reasons to be hopeful as Christmas approaches.

Welcome to the 140^th edition of The Sunday Spark, a series with weekly thoughts and highlights, nuggets of learning, and a simple living challenge for the week. In addition to celebrating this season of hope, this week’s edition looks at France’s new fast fashion law, Elphaba’s message of “green for good”, and upcycling used tires into noise barriers.

On my mind this week: Celebrating a season of hope

Today, Christians around the world observe the first Sunday of Advent by lighting the first candle on the Advent wreath. Each of the four candles on the wreath has symbolic meaning, with the first candle representing hope.

For Christians, Advent is a time of hope and prayerful anticipation as we prepare to celebrate the birth of Jesus on Christmas Day. It’s an opportunity to be still and reflect, something at odds with the busyness and stress of most Christmas preparations.

Even if Christmas is not a religious or spiritual celebration for you, the four themes of hope, peace, joy and love are universal. They offer an opportunity to reflect and focus on something positive.

Reasons to be hopeful in 2025

As we wrap up another challenging year, it would be easy to despair at all the difficulties facing our world in 2025. But if we open our eyes, there are many reasons to be hopeful. As I reflected on this season of hope, I dusted off and updated something I wrote back in 2022.

Here’s a list of 10 simple things that give me hope right now. None of these are magical or revolutionary. But they serve as a powerful reminder that there is always something to be hopeful about, no matter how small. I find hope in…

• People performing acts of charity and kindness in the world, like our neighbour who puts on a spectacular Christmas light display and hosts a meet and greet with Santa to collect donations for the food bank.
• The positivity and wonderful sense of community among the bloggers here on WordPress.
• The knowledge that spring will follow winter, and the spring flowers will be ready to make their appearance when the time is right.
• The beautiful pink flowers that appeared on my kalanchoe plant this week, bringing cheer to the dark days of November.
• Christmas cards bearing personal handwritten messages of love.
• My daughters who are both working and making their way in the world.
• Knowing that, in just over three weeks, we’ll start to get a tiny bit of additional daylight every day.
• Seeing people much older than me doing great things.
• The endless selection of learning and knowledge that I can take advantage of every day—literally at my fingertips.
• The fact that, despite my recent health challenges, I’m in good health overall.

What brings you hope this time of year? Drop me a comment below to let me know.

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Three highlights of the week

It’s important to celebrate big milestones and simple pleasures in life. Keeping the trend going, here are three highlights and simple pleasures of the week gone by:

• As we were walloped by the first major snowstorm of the winter, I was grateful that our new vehicle has all-wheel drive.
• This week I had a couple of reasons to celebrate the technology that keeps us connected with distant loved ones. On the weekend, I had a video call and played games online with my two daughters. Then on Tuesday, I had a virtual catch up with two friends that I used to work with. Despite its challenges, technology is another reason to be hopeful if we use it wisely.
• The Retirement Coaches Association confirmed acceptance of my idea for a chapter in their upcoming book to be released in mid-2026. I’ll be writing about the value of decluttering as we approach retirement.

Things I learned this week

Life is all about learning. Here are three things I learned this week:

France targets fast fashion with new law

The French government has passed a new law targeting fast fashion.

Aimed at traditional fast fashion companies, and online retailers of cheap goods, the law would implement penalties of at least 10 Euros per fast fashion clothing item by 2030. Companies could face fines up to 50% of each product’s pre-tax price if they fail to meet environmental standards.

Even better, the bill bans advertising for fast fashion products. Social media influencers who promote these items would face sanctions under the law.

Kudos to France. Let’s hope other countries will follow suit.

(Source: Happy Eco News)

Elphaba says “Be green for good!”

In a nice tie-in, the newly released Wicked: For Good film features a trailer with Elphaba promoting sustainability and encouraging viewers to visit begreenforgood.com.

The site features toolkits for greenifying communities, protecting wildlife, and taking simple everyday actions.

Upcycling used tires into noise barriers

Discarded tires are a big environmental problem, leading many countries to ban them from landfills where they present a toxic fire hazard and their compounds contaminate soil.

A Czech company is turning used tires into noise barriers for highways and railways. This is an ideal solution because rubber absorbs sound better than existing materials. Testing shows these tire recycling innovations can reduce noise levels by up to 10 decibels compared to traditional materials. And, tire barriers last longer than concrete barriers, lowering costs in the long run.

(Source: Happy Eco News)

This week’s simple living challenge – Reduce the number of beauty products you use

Simplifying life is a big part of living more intentionally. With that in mind, I kicked off the year with 52 ways to simplify your life this year, including a downloadable checklist of weekly tasks.

This week’s challenge is to do an audit of your beauty and personal care products and cut down the number of products you use. Multi-use products like coconut oil are sustainable, effective and can save you money.

I’d love to hear what you think about any of this week’s topics. Drop me a comment below and let me know your thoughts and ideas.