When Claudia Laroye spent a year as an exchange student in Karlskoga, Sweden, she found the winter’s fleeting daylight difficult. “It was dark when I went to school and it was dark when I came home from school,” she recalls. “It definitely wore on me.” But the Swedish tradition of lighting a lamp in every window during the shortest days of the year helped lift her spirits—and now she’s brought the tradition to her home in Vancouver.

“I found lights that I liked and installed them in our windows,” says Laroye, a writer and mom of two sons. “We go for walks with our dog every evening after dinner and when I look back at the house, the lights just make