Your Friday Briefing

How we coped in a dark year

Seeking moments of light, we found solace in rescue animals, banana bread and — for the messy among us — the joy of not tidying up. We watched an awful lot of television, some of it excellent. We cooked, and cooked, and cooked (see below) — and then ordered takeout. Sometimes, we just played The Sims 4.

Readers told us about their silver linings, too. “I am thankful to be thankful,” one wrote.

Love in the time of Covid: The essays that appear in Modern Love don’t typically reflect the current news cycle. But during months of lockdown, people found love, resilience and sometimes just clarity in hard and hopeless places.

The pandemic pulled people together, even as it pushed them apart. (Our colleagues at The Morning even helped broker an engagement.)

One standout: At the border between Germany and Denmark, two lovers in their 80s found a romantic way to keep (almost) in touch. She brings the coffee, he the schnapps.

Resilience: “Winter is a primal time of death and loss, and a time for grief,” wrote Elizabeth Dias, a national reporter. “It reminds us that darkness, not only light, is part of the recurring rhythm of what it means to be human.”

Best of: Wonderful movies. Extra-special children’s books. Albums worth celebrating. Our critics and editors compiled lists of the “best of” almost everything: classical music, books, songs, theater, dance, podcasts, jazz.

And while Oxford couldn’t quite come through with a word of the year, Joe Biden may have found the perfect term: inshallah.

The stories you loved …

Your morning briefing aims to get you up to speed quickly, recapping the biggest headlines and offering a look ahead to the major stories The Times is covering that day.

But many of the most popular pieces this year weren’t part of the often exhausting news cycle. They were human-interest articles, sometimes with a hint of enigma. For instance:

… and some you might have missed

In 2020, three enormous stories — a pandemic, an election and a reckoning on racial justice — dominated the headlines. (Take a look at The Year in Pictures for a recap of all three.) But other subjects, significant or otherwise, were sometimes swept away by the torrent of news.

Here are seven stories that might have passed you by:

Faces that can’t be forgotten

This year, the world lost more than 1.7 million people to the coronavirus, with more than 300,000 deaths in the U.S. alone.

The Times tried to tell the stories behind the numbers with our Those We’ve Lost series, memorializing parents, children, committed frontline workers and people who had previously survived the Holocaust, the Spanish flu and other tragedies.

The killings of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery and so many others in the U.S. broke hearts and prompted protests for racial justice across the world.

We also remembered and celebrated people whose lives helped shape history. Here are some for the ages:

Those left behind: Five Americans told the stories of people they lost to the pandemic — not to dwell on their deaths, but to celebrate how they lived. And one writer, mourning the loss of his 29-year-old best friend to the coronavirus, described the sensation of being ruined by a perfect love. “I am better because of it,” he writes.

Overlooked no more: In our series about remarkable people whose deaths went unreported in The Times, we remembered a pioneering writer of erotic comics, a suffragist with a distinction and the “Real Aunt Jemima,” among many others.