HumanLight was conceived specifically to address what sociologists studying secular and religiously mixed families have called the December dilemma, the social and personal pressure nonreligious people and interfaith families can feel during a month when Christmas, Hanukkah and other religious observances dominate public and commercial life, leaving those without a religious tradition of their own, or navigating more than one, without an equivalent occasion of their own to mark with family and community.
Adoption of the holiday has remained modest and organic rather than centrally promoted: individual humanist chapters, secular student groups and interfaith families have taken it up at their own pace since 2001, with some communities holding organised public HumanLight gatherings modelled closely on the original New Jersey event and others marking it only as a private family occasion or not observing it at all, so that, unlike more centrally organised religious holidays, HumanLight's actual reach depends entirely on scattered, bottom-up adoption by individual groups and families who encounter and choose to keep it rather than on any coordinated promotional effort by a national organisation.